> Our Not So Simple Plan
>  by WolfmanWhite
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 1 In Which A Nervous Breakdown Occurs, A Plan Is Formed.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sky above the hotel was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel — which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue. A nice sunny day is a rarity in the UK, so you learned to enjoy it while you could. I’d just finished work for the day as a dishwasher in the hotel’s kitchen and my feet were absolutely killing me. I slung my backpack into my crappy blue two-door clio and drove in silence, since I’d lost the activation key for the radio five years back.

It was Friday and I was looking forward to the weekend immensely. On Sunday, I’d be driving to Manchester with my parents and flying to California, where I’d spend a wonderful two weeks with my boyfriend. Admittedly, my family coming along was a bit of a fly in the ointment, but they’d be too busy doing stereotypical touristy stuff, so that shouldn’t be too bad.

I idly gazed at the Welcome to Wales (croeso i gymru) sign and the red dragon flag that signified I was over the border. The Hotel was half an hours drive from my hometown despite being in England so I hopped the border regularly via a large motorway bridge that cut across a large forested valley, typical of Wales. I idly took in the view of the river Dee, tired but attentively keeping most of my focus on the road.

Soon enough, I pulled into the town of Wrexham, my hometown, and where I’d lived the last 24 years of my life. It’s not as though it was a bad town per se but to me it was just so stale and samey. Outside of having the most pubs and bars in a square mile radius in all of Wales, the only entertainment to be found was a bowling alley and an Odeon cinema. Having no friends locally to attend either of these facilities with basically left me confined to my house.

As I turned into the Cul-de-Sac of my street, I saw my parents’ two cars parked up the driveway. I parked my Clio on the small stretch of pavement just outside so as not to block them in. Tomorrow, I’d have to follow both of them as they parked their cars in work for storage. I’d have to drive them home.

Dinner was a forgettable blur of cheap supermarket pizza and my parents sniping at each other, turning on me when they ran out of ammunition to spend on themselves. Like most family meals we had, I tried to avoid them whenever I could. Our seats were wooden and uncomfortable because they lacked padding, which would leave me awkwardly shuffling around on my skinny ass as I’d try to keep it from falling asleep.

I didn’t exactly get on well with my family. They were completely unpleasable and would hold anything positive they ever did for me over my head, much like parents pretty much everywhere. I knew for a fact they’d be holding this trip over my head for the next year or so, even though I offered to pay for my share of it.

I quietly excused myself and promised to start packing my case tomorrow. I slouched up the stairs and browsed the internet half-heartedly clicking links and generally loafing around Killing Time™ until Sunday hit. I really, really needed this vacation. I’d get to see all my friends again; even some who wouldn’t normally be in California. “Q” lived in Alabama and was going out of his way to visit Cali at the same time as me so we could all meet up in person and have a good time. He was bringing his own local brew and I had already packed what I was bringing: A large bottle of single malt Penderyn whiskey. 25 years old, just older than me by a year. Cost a pretty penny, but it’d be worth it. Q was a fun drunk, and so was I. It wouldn’t take much to convince “Neon”, my boyfriend, to join in on the festivities, which I could imagine being mostly irritating and teasing “LF”, who didn’t drink. With any luck, our two other friends Lexi and Max would be able to make it if they hadn’t moved to Oklahoma yet.

The evening passed the same way all my evenings did. Soon, all of the laugher and interesting conversation had to come to an end. Checking my computer’s clock, it was close to 2am, and it was time to sleep. I made my goodbyes into my headset before taking it off, along with my glasses, setting both down on my desktop, next to my keyboard. Almost forgetting, I removed the toothpick I’d idly been chewing, sweeping up the shredded remains of a few others I’d been gnawing on all night. I’d chew on anything. Toothpicks, matches, pens, paperclips. Anything. I always felt more comfortable when I had something to do with my mouth.

Sleep came, and I embraced it.

I’ve never been the most restful sleeper. My dreams are (I’d like to assume) relatively normal. Normal in that they usually consist of me running through treacle across various landscapes while being pursued by mundane things made terrifying. I recall one of my most vivid dreams was of being chased by an angry ninja with melon ballers for hands who seemed to be very upset with me for some reason (I am assuming due to the aforementioned hand situation) before he had to abscond because he was being chased by a horde of snakes.

Yaknow, normal dreams. Which is what made this dream so… well. So weird.

I don't remember much about it, which is par for the course. But what I do remember was... heat. Heat. Hunger. And, for some reason, eggshells? Yeah. I was inside an egg. And when I opened my eyes I could see brilliant, dazzling light. A twinkling light that made me salivate with a hunger I have never, ever felt before.

And then I was dragged kicking and screaming, back into the real world, forcing me to abandon every shred of memory I couldn’t cling onto.

With a groggy blink, I opened my eyes to the real world once again.

And then immediately turned over and planted my pillow over my head. Ten more minutes couldn’t hurt, right?

Well, considering my pillow made a quiet tearing sound, they probably could.

“Fhshmn?” I burbled. Consciousness fighting me every step of the way, I felt my hand around for the tear in the pillow. I was able to find the pillow on my third try. I attributed this to my grogginess, for now.

I lifted the pillow off of my head, and found it incredibly difficult to let go. After shaking it around for a few seconds, it ripped loose with another, louder shredding noise.

A slip of cotton stuck to my reddish-pink, stubby fingers. I pawed absentmindedly at it to pull it loose and found my other hand in a completely different spatial area than I was used to.

Wait, what? Stubby fingers? Reddish-pink?!

My one exposed eye opened as wide as a black hole, staring in horror at the offending appendage. Reddish-pink. Scaley. Stubby fingers. And sharp. Very sharp.

Okay, the important thing to do is stay calm and wake up.

“AWAAAAGH!”

As I flailed in my sheer terror to get out of bed, two unknown modifiers to the situation presented themselves. As I rolled off of my bed, I found myself a lot smaller than my usual 5”11’. A lot.

The second factor was that my bedsheets had become ensnared and entangled across my body, like some kind of bedsheet anaconda. Every struggle just choked the life out of me a little more.

I fell to the floor with a surprisingly light “thwump”.

Okay. Okay. We’re calm. We’re calm. I’m calm. Okay. Breathe. Breathe.

Situation.

Movement?

I wiggled my neck, and felt the bedding constrict. A quick shimmy around proved similar for all of my limbs. Both my arms, both my legs and my ta-

“WAIT WHAT?!”

A tail. I have a tail.

Okay. This is the part where I wake up. This is that part.

I closed my eyes vault tight and examined the insides of my eyelids, telling reality that what was currently transpiring wasn’t happening at this moment in time and I was about to wake up right…. NOW!

My eyes sprang open and once again found themselves staring at the floor.

Oh god. Oh godohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod…

It was at this point the nervous breakdown hit. I don’t remember how long it lasted, and I don’t remember what I thought, except for sheer, unbridled terror. In fact, I’m pretty sure I thought nothing but the purest form of terror ever thought of in the history of mankind.

...or whatever the hell I was now.

On the plus side, I was free of my bedsheet anaconda prison. It lay in tatters after my panicked, primal fear-spasm. But obviously that was the least of my rapidly growing list of problems, which I had still yet to mentally sort. Okay, where to begin?

One. Currently too small to see over my bed. This was a biggie.

Two…. eeeeh, forget about two….

My wardrobe was on the other side of the room, conveniently blocked from my sight by my current vertically challenged position. Its doors were mirrored, I could check my reflection! I scampered blindly around my bed, falling to the floor as my new… tail-y appendage got snagged by my desk chair.

Half crawling, half sprinting in dead panic, I skidded to a halt in front of my wardrobe.





Well… This is a lot to take in… Where to start?

I’m about 3 feet, maybe, from my toes to the tip of my… well, horns, I guess. Horns. I had horns. Not too long, maybe a foot in size, tucked behind my head instead of out to the side like a bull’s. Or a demon’s, that would be more fitting. A tiny, reddish-pink demon. Wait, am I a demon? Am I, like, an imp or something? Oh god, am I in hell?! Is this my penance for being a gay atheist?!

“Aw FUCK!” I shrieked, my hands instantly slapping up to my mouth. My voice was a few million octaves higher than I was used to. I didn’t have the deepest voice on the planet, but considering its default vocal style was the deadest of deadpan, I was surprised to find my voice having the ability to break glass at the slightest tremble of my vocal cords.

“Okay. Okay…” I said, beginning to speak just so I could get accustomed to the change.
My fairly long, blonde hair had been replaced with small scales, shimmering almost like they were constantly wet. They looked like Industrial Light and Magic was working overtime, all the time. If it were on anything that wasn’t ME, I would have been entranced by them.

My hands were obviously small and claw like. I could still wiggle my fingers, but it felt like each of my fingernails had merged with the tips of my fingers. I touched them together experimentally. The clacking they made resonated in my ears.

Ears... I have no ears!

I tossed my head left and right, scanning each side of my skull. The examination turned up a couple of tiny holes beneath my horns, which… well, what else could they have been? If I had been more confident, I would have stuck one of my fingers inside of them, but that would probably have been the second worst thing I did that day, outside of waking up.

My feet told a story similar to my hands, except with feet. Claws lined my toes and threatened to trip me up as they got caught in the carpet of my floor. Which just left…

My tail was about half the length of my body. It seemed content to just sit there and pout, twitching on occasion, as if resenting me for looking at it. Well, two could play at that game. I gave it a look of complete and utter contempt, and it responded by smacking itself against my bedpost. It was smooth, scaly and the same reddish-pink that made up the rest of my body. The tip was made of the same material as my claws and toes, but not as sharp.

Welp. This is me. This is the individual formally known as… well, Tom. My parents are gonna fucking flip. I’ll be responsible for this, I just know it. It’ll be my fault…

Well, guess I’d better go come out of the demonic imp closest to my parents. And I was hoping once in a lifetime was enough.

I briefly considered toying with crawling back into bed, wrapping the remains of the bedsheet anaconda around me and gently weeping until I died of dehydration or depression or for simply being me, the universe’s plaything.

After dismissing that plan of action as thoroughly useless, I shuffled awkwardly over to my door, past one of the poems I had framed upon my wall: The Raven. Ah. Problem number… pick one. The door handle was JUST out of reach. Universe’s plaything.

After wheeling my desktop chair to the door and shimmying the handle, I realised that as far as problems go, getting the door open wasn’t really a big one. I padded out into the upstairs hallway of my home. I could see my parents’ room, which was right next to mine, with the bathroom on the other side. It was late morning, and normally I was the one who’d sleep in. My parents should have been awake by then. And yet, the shadow looming underneath their bedroom door suggested that at the very least, my dad was still in his lair. 

Heh. Lair. 

God, I hoped my dad wasn’t a demon too. That would have just sucked. A shudder went down my spine as an even more dreadful thought emerged… What if my mother was?! The mere inkling of that thought paralyzed me with fear. After a small eternity, I quietly pushed the door open.

I forget how long I stood there on the precipice. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting…

Eventually, I gathered up what little courage was in my little body and stepped into my parents’ room. The smell of my father left for several hours in an unaired room drifted into my snoutish nose.

“Uhm… Guys?” I quavered.

The bed stayed silent, and nothing more.

I tiptoed towards it, losing balance once as a toe snagged the carpet.

I tugged at the unkempt bedspread.

“...Dad?”

The bed remained silent, and nothing more.

I slinked past the bed to their window. I flung back the curtains and opened the window, letting the stale air out.

The bed completely and utterly failed to react.

Eventually, I simply settled for throwing the sheets off the bed.

I was greeted by a complete and utter lack of any form of paternal unit.

As the hour passed, I turned the house upside down, having to practically slide down the stairs on my ass like a five year old child. But absolutely no trace of my family could be found.

“O-kay. Either this is the rapture, or… a nuke or something hit. Or something. Okay. Okay. Outside. Someone has to be in on our street, right?” I said to myself, acutely aware of the first sign of madness. I found that point moot though, as I was a 3 foot tall lizard thing.

Repeating the previous door opening scenario with my front door and a kitchen chair, I absconded my abode and stepped out into a very desolate street.

One of my neighbors across the road was a nurse, a charity worker and a well known member of the church. If this was the rapture, I knew for a fact that she wouldn’t be around. A peek through all of her windows confirmed this suspicion. A complete lack of neighbor.

Another of my neighbors a few doors down was a young couple with two children: unmarried, alcoholic, and, if rumor were to be believed, weren’t above dealing in narcotics to their friends, very loudly, at 3am. I was pretty confident that they were at least as knee-deep in sin as me, which left me very worried when it turned out that they had vanished too.

Either being a gay atheist was the pinnacle of sin, or this wasn’t the rapture. Which left nuclear war. A scan of the skyline revealed no ominous mushroom cloud. It was actually a pretty nice day, all told. All of our windows were intact, too. I recalled exploded windows being a major thing regarding a nuclear detonation. In fact, the field at the end of my road continued to contain a herd of very alive-looking cows, cows which persisted in not looking decayed or sickly or demonic or… anything really. Just cowlike.

So what the hell happened here?!

I scampered back inside my house, anxiety building in my throat. Before, there was the breakdown, but here came the inevitable panic attack. I was prone to these years ago, and it had taken me the better part of five years to keep them under control with proper breathing exercises and positive thinking. The latter was in very short supply.

I had just made it to the big trash can in my kitchen and popped the lid when it came. I shut my eyes and let it all out. The acidic vomit burned in my throat and somehow summoned the curling, acrid smell of smoke to my nostrils. I closed the trash can without looking at my mess.

And obviously not noticing the small fire smoldering inside the trash.

I sat in my room, on my bed, and hugged myself. Everyone was gone. Except for animals and myself. I guess I was an animal too now, right? Never did have much self esteem…

A loud buzzing went off next to my tail: my alarm. If I’d slept in, I’d only just be waking up to this nightmare. I scratched the screen with my claw to silence it. And that’s when I saw it…

My phone’s background was a picture of my boyfriend smiling dorkily at me. I was supposed to be flying out to see him tomorrow.

I let the phone slip from my grip, hearing it bounce on the mattress as I curled up into a ball.

It wasn’t fair!

I’m all that’s left. Me. “Worthless White”. Why now? Why couldn’t I vanish like everyone else?!

My computer silently flashed its blue light at me. Winking at me. Drawing me in. Well, if anyone else were around, there was always Reddit, I guessed. I scooted my chair back over and struggled into it. My claws chipped and scratched at my keyboard, but who the hell cared?!

The internet was still up. And Reddit was dead. Completely dead. I don’t know why I bothered. The last activity was several hours ago, and it was a stupid cat gif. I clicked it and let it load anyway, the silent watcher of humanity’s last moments.

...heh. It was pretty funny though…

A thought occurred to me: this was sorted by most popular. Most viral. Not most recent. Seizing this opportunity, I put my claw through my left mouse button.

A POST!

A… post… by “LF”?! The same “LF” as… MY LF?

I booted up Steam. Please. Please. Come on universe. Come on. Cut me a break, right?!

Four users online. “LF”, “Neon”, “Wolf”, and myself.

I shepherded the remains of my mouse and coaxed a final left click, starting up voice chat.

Noise started squawking out of my headset, left suspended on a bedpost. I crammed it as best I could over my “ears” and…. well. I unleashed the floodgates.

"Oh, Jesus christ FINALLY! I woke up as some TINY-ASS LIZARD THING! And there's nobody around. I've spent all day running around town and it's dead. Not a soul online either! Reddit's dead! Did I miss some sort of evacuation memo? Am I a horribly mutated radioactive freak? I'm going nuts here guys..."

At this point, I stopped to breathe as silence filled the air.

"Hold up, so we’re all seeing the same thing?” A low voice rumbled into my ears. It sounded gravelly. And I don’t mean like, fifteen years of whiskey sours gravelly, I’m talking actual gravel here. The icon said “Capt. Wolf” was talking, but for all I knew, a mountain golem could have been manning the mic. “Aside from you guys I haven't found anyone ANYWHERE around here."

“"I mean there's my cat and some dogs and like sheep or whatever but I mean bunkers can't really hold sheep." It was pretty obvious even to me that I was babbling, but I didn’t care. The relief was streaming off of me. Out of everyone in the world to survive, it was my real family.

...which left me wondering what it was WE did to end up in this clusterfuck. It was probably LF’s fault.

"You know what I mean, people." Wolfs voice snapped me back. “People” was a very broad term right now. I mean, did I count as a person?

"Look, man, I don't even know what I am, let alone- Wait. Are you guys weird lizard things too?" The words once again hung in the air like sodden laundry.

"I'm, well, more like a... dog... ape… thing?” Wolf responded. Great. Dog-ape. Dape? Or Aog? No. Definitely Dape. Certainly not a golem.

Finally, someone that wasn’t Wolf spoke up. Turns out it was LF.

"Nope, I'm some sort of bat-pony hybrid thing." Shrilled a vaguely feminine voice that most certainly was NOT LF. But then again, I sounded like a little girl, so I couldn’t talk.

"... shit," Grumbled Wolf.

"I don't know if I can draw anymore like this." That was Neon. His voice had changed the least. I was blindsided for the moment. No “Hey, my boyfriend is one of the last vestiges of humanity!”, just “I can’t draw”. Thanks. Love you too, asshole. "I mean, I managed to use the computer, but-"

"Drawing?” The gravel gravelled incredulously. “I'm sorry to be the sledgehammer of realism at this point, but we all seem to be doing a bang-up job completely ignoring how royally screwed we are at this given moment, like ... CHRIST!" 

I cracked again. "I assure you I HAVE NOT BEEN IGNORING IT," I shrieked.

"Its not going to do us much good to panic. Panic can come after I'm done backing up stuff for later use.” That was LF again. He definitely had the same speech patterns that he used to, but it was just too weird not hearing his regular voice.

“White, why is your voice so high-pitched? Mine feels, almost the same? What the heck?” Neon spoke up, confused as I was. My voice certainly didn’t fit my new looks. If anything, I should have the gravel-gargling voice Wolf did. So why was mine so high pitched? Discounting it being the default voice of all… lizard-thing-kind, it left only two options. And I was only willing to entertain one of those at the moment.

“I-... I don't know. I sound like a kid." It hurt, admitting it aloud. But I pressed on. "... and I'm the same size as a kid..." Unless all lizard things were 3 foot tall and squeaky voiced, the only conclusion I could come to was that I was a child. I felt another panic attack come on. "...Oh goddammit."

“White, look, even if you are somehow younger, it just means you’ve had some more years added to your life. Don’t get all panicky just yet. ” That was LF, ever the optimist. Me and him were two sides of the same coin. Everything always worked out well for him. Everything was always sunshine and goddamn rainbows and it was always pessimist White that got the short end of the stick karma-wise.

Wolf tried to rally us. "We need to focus. What we do know is we're still here, and obviously we're still US.” He trailed off. Constructive thinking was certainly better than blind panic, even I had to agree. “Has anyone else appeared on your contact lists?  Mine are still dead as shit.”

“No, I've got nothing, and I’ve been here a while. The sun may as well be a brand on my eyes right now, so staring at my computer is at the upper limits of my usefulness at the moment.” LF said. So maybe everything WASN’T all sunshine and rainbows for once…

A burst of static heralded the arrival of a new person to the call. There was only one other person it could be: Qesun.

"So, I took a walk, guys. Or I tried to. I'm not very good at it right now. You’d think it would be easier with four legs, but you would be wrong. So now I'm trying to discount all this as a dream. Because, frankly, if I keep having to use my mouth for everything and taste all the things our hands have touched, I'm filing a complaint with both reality and causality." 

The conversation sparked anew, covering everything from how long the internet and power would last and where to meet up. This was naturally a problem for one of us. Me. I was the biggest fly in the ointment. Everyone was in the US, everyone could meet up. They just had to walk. Everyone except me, and goddamn it I was supposed to be there two days from now! It wasn’t fair!

"....I don't mind staying in the UK." I lied, badly. I knew it, they knew it. We all knew it. "I mean I WAS supposed to catch a plane in a couple of days, but I mean, what am I gonna do, fly the damn thing myself?!” I asked sarcastically. “I may as well just get used to being by myself instead of tormenting myself with the impossible." It was the truth. I was used to being alone anyway. Better than chasing some foolish risk of death.

"You want to speak of impossible? Look in the mirror." Wolf grumbled, trying to channel Kamina. "This is impossible. The fact we still managed to contact each other should be, at best, improbable. As far as I'm concerned, impossible doesn't exist anymore." He wasn’t exactly bad at it. Just… well, he could stand to work on it.

"You're.... encouraging me to fly a jet. Completely untrained, and 3 feet tall." I said. Completely flat. I just needed to get it out there.

LF responded equally deadpan. “Yes.”

“So you would rather sit on your aaaaaa-butt and do nothing?” Qesun followed up, strangely choking on the mild swear word, like I would choke on a mild pepper.

“No, White, I’m saying you’ll figure something out though.  The worst thing you could do is not try.”  Wolf again, still desperately trying to channel Kamina. Still not quite convincing me.

"White, all my resources VANISHED.  Any help that I could possibly be will be gone by this time tomorrow. This is not something that we can figure out. This one is on you." LF delivered the final deathblow. If I wanted to get on with whatever my life is now, I would have to figure out a way to get to the US.


" ... soooo, where are we going?” Neon’s voice echoed in my skull as I zoned out. 

This was on me now.

...

I’m not okay with that.
> 2 In Which Morality Is Internally Questioned
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I scratched my stubby snout. The feeling of claw on scaled nose still felt alien to me, and the entire situation still had an ethereal feel about it, like this wasn’t really happening. I wasn’t panicking anymore, I was quietly floating in the calm pools over the waterfalls of insanity. Perhaps it was shock, or maybe the opposite, maybe the initial shock had worn off.

The others set off to do whatever it was they wanted to do… all except Neon. My boyfriend and I had splintered off into a separate call. We’d been talking for a while now, but we weren’t saying a whole lot. I think we just wanted to hear each others voice, no matter how different it sounded. We just needed to know that the other was okay.

“Sorry for zoning out back there, Neon. What did you end up deciding? You’re going to meet up with LF, right?”

“Yeah, I’m going to meet up with him up near Vegas. It’s gonna be a long drive, so I’m gonna get some food from Ralphs.”

“Drive? You have hooves, right? How are you going to…?”

“Look man, I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. The tough part is filling the back of my van full of ice.”

“...why?”

“To chill all the food I’m taking, jeez!”

“Won’t it leak?”

“Maybe I’ll put a tarp in there, you don’t know! Why are you so worried about my problems, don’t you have some of your own to worry about?”

My mind was still reeling from the sheer audacity of what I had to do. It was impossible! Me, flying a plane? In a completely unfamiliar body? How would I even begin learning?

Well, I knew how to start there. I mean, I DID have Steam after all. I checked the store for the most recent and best flight simulator available: Microsoft Flight Simulator X. I’d never really played a flight sim before, nor did I have any joysticks or whatever doodads people would use for those types of games. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

I was actually surprised that the transaction worked. LF said the net itself would probably go down in a couple of days, and it stood to reason that Steam’s purchases would be fully automated…

I looked thoughtfully at my parents credit card. If society was missing, on the verge of collapse… well, they wouldn’t miss it. Would they?

Sometime later, I was the proud owner of every single product on Steam. Every single piece of overpriced Train Sim DLC, every single badly made indie pixel game, even every Football Manager. I felt a rush of pride. It felt right, having all these games. I basked in my own private glory. I had them all! Everything I wanted, and even things I didn't. My own collection, complete! Still soaring on the spending high, I went to other sites. GOG, uPlay, Origin. All of them! Every site I could think of. Each account bursting to it’s limits. I would never, ever play them all, or even any of them, in probability.

But that wasn’t the point. They were MINE.

And that felt good. It felt right.

Mine.

I jolted out of my own private revelry as Neon shouted my name. My head pounded, my eyes, sluggish.

You sounded like a little girl with a death laser…”

“I was just fulfilling a lifelong dream, Neon. Don’t worry about it. I just own every single game now.” 

“....you’re a dork.” The only response that was needed.

“I know. Shut up.”

“Has that flight sim finished downloading?”

It had. And I had NO idea what I was doing. But, with practice and perseverance over a couple of hours...  I still had no idea what I was doing. The hazy high I had been experiencing was wearing off rapidly, being replaced with the regularly scheduled broadcasting of encroaching dread.

“It’s all falling apart. Why am I even attempting this?!” My breathing was getting heavier and heavier as my mind raced. I tried jamming a toothpick in my mouth to gnaw on, but it snapped instantly. Drumming my fingers on my desk just scratched it up and made me even more aware of the insanity of the situation. This was impossible! I couldn’t! I can’t! I-

“...hey.” Neon softly spoke. “Calm down, okay?”

“Calm?! How can I stay calm?!”

“You need to relax, okay? Don’t go at everything at once. Try to relax. Focus on one thing at a time.”

I forced myself to control my breathing. In and out. In and out. Just having him there talking to me was helping.

“You’re not alone.” He continued. “Well, I mean, you are, but you’re also not. I mean I guess. What I’m trying to say is I love you.” His voice raised in pitch at the end, like he was unsure. As usual, it was one of his little quirks that made him who he was. I loved him for them.

I composed myself. Bunching my claws into a fist, then relaxing them. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have freaked out. I just-”

“Yeah, you should have! What, you think nobody else is doing the same thing as you?! I know I am.”

“LF probably isn’t.”

“Well, he’s weird. He probably likes this. Like some sort of… furry trash.”

“Do you?”

“Not one bit. Like, I just bought this Cintiq, and I can’t use it now! Look-- All I know is I need you here with me. A world without you is like a broken pencil. It’s pointless.”

I burst out laughing, fighting back tears. Normally it was ME making the shitty puns to him. I really WAS out of it.

“...I told you that one.”

“Well society is probably breaking down so I figured a little theft would be okay.”

I tackled the inane depths of the flight sim again with a fresh mind. An hour later, with Neon’s constant encouraging as we laughed and joked about anything and everything, I learned a little more. The two of us making fun of stupid stuff, playing videogames... I almost felt normal, were it not for my tail digging into the back of my chair.

I was fairly confident that within a couple of days I could bumble my way through a take-off. I had the sneaking suspicion that planes these days were fairly automated. My sister worked for Airbus and I think I heard her mention that over an evening meal once, between sniping bouts with my mother. I briefly considered checking up on her, as she didn’t live too far away from our house. But ultimately, I found myself not caring all that much, which struck me as odd. Logically I should be freaking out about how my family is missing and whining about how much I’ll miss them, but… I didn’t.

My family and I were not exactly close, though I decided that on my way to wherever I was going, I would check on my Nain. My Nain was the only member of my family that I got on with and didn’t moodily hate me for years on end after I came out. She admitted she did not raise my mother well, and I’m assuming she felt guilty for how my mother treated me. She was the only member of my family that encouraged me, that didn’t think I would automatically fail everything I did. I owed it to her to at least make sure she was… well, missing like everyone else. Definitively missing.

I had a good few hours of daylight left and I needed to step into town to gather things I felt I needed. Food. Electronics. Books. I had already been compiling a list of things that I would need. I said goodbye to Neon despite his whining protests, promising to be back in a couple of hours, but my stomach churned, wondering if this would be the last time.

As I prepared myself to head out, I noticed a burning smell. Burning plastic. I searched the entire house before I found the source in the kitchen. For some reason the trash can was burning! A quick washing tub of water quenched the flames and I stood there pondering what the hell caused it to catch fire. I hadn’t put anything in there since… this happened. I mean, I threw up in there, and it was… ew. Still in the melted plastic lump. But as far as I was aware, stomach acids aren’t strong enough to melt plastic. I shrugged at myself, giving up on this unsolvable mystery. I had supplies to recover.

I pushed open my front door yet again, pinning it open with my chair. My door was big thick heavy oak and its knob was always tricky to open even when I was tall enough to reach it. I didn’t want it ever closing in on me again, locking me out until I could scale the fence behind my house and shimmy in through the kitchen window and fall into the sink.

I had brought with me the only bag that was small enough to fit over my tiny frame. I had purchased a leather satchel with a large clasp for LARP a few months back. It was deep enough to store a lot of useful things in and the clasp meant I could open it fairly quickly even with my sharp talon-like claws.

I reviewed my mental checklist. I’d need a laptop car charger. If I was going to be travelling around in a country without power, the only way to charge my laptop would be through car batteries. I’d also need a length of tubing to siphon fuel from other cars and a can to put them in since I was pretty sure that petrol pumps worked off of electricity, and I wasn’t exactly happy with the idea of popping the top off of one of those big petrol storage tanks they had at petrol stations. So that’d mean an electronics store and a DIY store. There was a petrol station down the street from my house, across from Glyndwr University. They sold petrol cans there, so that was one problem taken care of. The DIY store B&Q and the electrical store Curry’s weren’t that far away either, so I wouldn’t even be venturing into Wrexham proper, unless I wanted to look around for other people.

The town was damn quiet for 4pm. People should be coming home from work by now, but the road was just dead. Like one of those post apocalypse movies. I’d often thought about how I’d handle such an event, like the traditional zombie apocalypse. This was a bit out of my comfort zone because there was nobody to fight and I’d never factored being a small reddish-pink lizard into my daydreams. It never came up.

Glyndwr University stared at me with it’s cold, empty windows. The Welsh flag hung limply from its flagpole, obscuring its contents. I scurried along to the petrol station, cursing my awkward, stubby legs. The first few steps onto the pavement spooked me, as my claws scrabbled on the cement dust. It was a sound I’d have to get used to now. It took me twice as long as I expected due to my tiny legs, and I was quickly out of breath when I reached the petrol station. With a bit of a struggle, I opened the glass fronted door and entered the convenience store that all petrol stations had, trying to sell you snacks for only slightly less than it cost for your petrol. A personal desk fan languidly flitted over the abandoned cashiers desk. The stand selling petrol cans stood close to the desk. 

As I nervously snatched up a few cans, I wondered if I should pay. It felt wrong not to. Like, what if all of this was some convoluted prank and a camera crew was suddenly going to pop out from underneath the overpriced M&Ms and make fun of me for stealing? What if they had a police car ready to go outside? Whats that? Confused as to why you’re still a tiny pink lizard? All part of the prank, of course!

I shook my head. As far as paranoid thoughts go, that was by far one of the stupidest and it didn’t deserve another moment's thought. But as I opened the glass-fronted door, I still tentatively stuck my head around the corner to check for police cars or nefarious camera crews, almost hoping that they would show up. But they didn’t.

The door swung gently as I left.

The empty plastic petrol cans were a cumbersome carry back home. I wish I had thought to bring some string or something so I could tie them all together instead of constantly dropping them all over the road. It took another exhausting ten minutes to make my return. I dropped the three cans on my front lawn and evaluated, having had some thoughts while I was walking back. My battered blue Clio, I knew how to drive. But….

Across the road, at my goodly neighbor's house, there was a gleaming Rolls Royce. The husband of the family was a very successful building parts wholesaler. Lumber, bricks, mortar, stuff like that. And he’d spent a pretty penny on that nice shiny car. Normally I wouldn’t care about that sort of thing, since I couldn’t care less about cars. They were for going from point A to point B.

But the Rolls gleamed in the sunlight. I remember it’s owner had spent most of the previous day waxing it. It’d be a crime NOT to take it.

I needed it. It was bigger than my Clio, so it could store more things. It was going to be my car, I’d decided.

Mine.

Okay. The petrol station had been ticked off, which left the B&Q and Curry’s. Both were right next to each other, pretty much. In the opposite direction from the Petrol Station. They were a little further away, a walk I had mentally listed as ten minutes became twenty minutes.. oy vey. 

A while later, I was scampering across what was normally a hectic and dangerous intersection. B&Q loomed down on me with it’s big red box motif and giant white letters. Thankfully I wasn’t going to be in here very long; I only needed a tube after all. As I stepped past the automated doors, the size of the building hit me even harder. There were 30 isles and it brought back uncomfortable memories of being a child lost in a supermarket. I groped inside my satchel for my toothpicks, and remembered I had left them at home because my knifelike teeth just shredded them instantly.

Lets see… faucets, sinks, lumber, lighting, drills…

Hmmn. Drills.

An inspired idea popped into my head and I stepped into the drill isle. I needed some replacements for my toothpicks if I wanted to keep my sanity. Drill bits were a fair bit tougher than toothpicks, while still being the same rough size and shape. It couldn’t hurt, right? I don’t think a jackhammer could make a dent in these spiky horrors.

So I took a few packs and shoved them into my satchel. It’s not like I’d lose anything by trying it out. I gave one an experimental nibble as I continued my quest. I soon got used to the metallic tang, which surprised me, considering its odd taste. I idly wondered if this had something to do with my physiology as I found myself in the gardening section. I had long since given up hope of finding a plain old length of plastic tubing, so I decided to just bite and claw a length of garden hose off of a display stand. It was green, and a bit wider than I was expecting to use, but it should still fill my needs. Not like I couldn’t look around for a better one when the time came.

I stumbled out into the open air again, eyes blinking from the severe change in lighting. The day continued to be a good one. Typical. It took the world ending for Britain to get some sunshine.

Curry’s, right next door to B&Q, didn’t have the same foreboding architecture. The building was more modern and less boxy, all shiny and chrome like a valhallan god. It’s front was open glass, showing off all the fun new gadgets and tablets that people absolutely needed, all for the low, low price of this weeks wages, and some of next.

I never really ventured into Curry’s before, as I did all of my shopping online. The layout was a confusing hodgepodge and nothing was clearly labelled as there were no isles. I saw a sign at the very back of the store that said “PC Accessories”, and began circumnavigating the globe to get there. What I got was two shelves, one of them being a rack of shovelware “hidden object” games. But I was lucky enough to find a car charger for my laptop. It was a probably crappy off-brand make, but it’d last me until I could find another.

It had been about two hours since I set out, but now I had pretty much everything I absolutely needed. Food and suchlike could wait. I could just pull into any store anywhere and just take what I wanted. All that left now is getting that Rolls Royce out onto the street. My neighbors had always left us a spare key, since we’d look after their house while they went on their numerous retiree vacations. They even had their own summer cabin up in Snowdonia. If I remembered correctly, they were going to be heading out there when my family got back from our trip.

Their door was much easier to open than my house’s and their keys were located in the small dish next to their phone, by their front door. Expensive, but well cared for antiques and paintings shared the exact same wallspace as their many, storied family photographs. The couple had spent their retirement well, as their grinning faces from Chichen Itza and the Forbidden City could attest. I pulled my eyes away from the photos and reached out to take the keys. My hand froze. Not three hours ago I was upset about stealing a couple of plastic cans from a store. And here I was taking my neighbors expensive car without so much as a second thought. Well, technically, I thought, this counted as a second thought… But the point still stood. I really got over stealing things quickly. These were good people, incredible neighbors. Heulwen and Jack were pretty much honorary family to me and here I was just about to take their damn car. How disrespectful.

I quietly bowed my head in the empty house, turning my eyes downwards from the smiling photographs, like a scolded child. I could feel my eyes well up, because now I was getting more upset over ruining the memory of my neighbors than I was of my family’s disappearance.

“I apologise for my behavior.” I muttered awkwardly, shamefully. “I will take very good care of your car.”

I closed the door quietly behind me as I left.

> 3 In Which The Importance Of Booster Seats Is Discovered
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My ill gotten prize jingled in my claws as I made my way across the cul-de-sac to my house. My stomach roiled inside me, I must have been hungry by now, but I was just too conflicted to eat. I didn’t deserve it.

I hoisted myself over the chair I propped the front door with and hopped back down inside my house. The three petrol cans still laid on the front lawn outside. I didn’t worry, though. It’s not like there was anyone around to break in or steal them and even if there were, they’d have the entire town to play around in. There would be no sense in bothering me at all.

As I ascended up the stairs to my room, a task that would normally take a moment now took upwards of a minute, I heard something familiar.

I heard an inquisitive meow.

And sure enough, when I swiveled my head around, she was sitting there, staring up at me with wide eyes. A little on the elderly side now, so her black and white coat was patched with grey and her face had the grizzled countenance of all elder felines, but sure enough, that was Beth.

Beth used to belong to the previous occupants of the Bad House. Who, co-incidentally, were also addicts. Addicts that kept cats locked up inside their house, that didn’t feed them and didn’t spay or neuter them. Eventually they “moved” (got evicted) and in the confusion, a single one of their feline prisoners saw her chance. Out the door and over the fence, we found her in our yard a day after they left. The couple did come back asking after her, but we thought it best for everyone involved if we took care of her instead.

Me and Beth had a special relationship. You ever get those cats that are absolute bastards to everyone they know? The sort of cat that refuses to come when you call and goes missing for days on end? You’ll find that cats like that bond with a single person and smother them in all their love. I was Beth’s chosen. Every time she’d hear my car pull up, she’d be waiting right outside our door for me, purring like a motorcycle.

She stared at me with interest, but her wide eyes and flat ears gave her fear away.

“...hello there, Missy.” I cooed out softly, trying to emulate how I would normally talk to her. “Missy” was my pet name for her, since she always held herself with a noble air, even with her extra inbred toes. Although now come to think of it, that just made her even more like the nobility.

She didn’t flinch away, but she let out another confused meow. Louder this time. She was worried. Scared.

I began to slowly shuffle myself back down the stairs, taking care not to make any sudden movements. As far as I knew, Beth was the only family I had left and I didn’t want to send her running.
Once I had reached the bottom of the stairs, Beth had shrunk in on herself like a fuzzy turtle and further away from me. I approached as nonthreatening as possible and slowly held out my hand. She’d be able to tell who I was, surely?

A claw batted my hand away, her nails skittering across my scales sounding all the world like someone trying to strike a match. As I pulled my hand back in shock, she hissed at me and bolted out of the door. There was a very faint scratch across the back of my hand, but I didn’t feel a thing. I sat on the stair and stared for a good long while. She never returned.

“...I guess you don’t recognize me after all.” I eventually said to nobody in particular, still staring at the tiny scratch on my mailed hand.

A while later, I shook my head vigorously. That was enough self pity for the time being. Keep moving forward. If you can’t run, you walk. If you can’t walk, you crawl. And when you can’t do that…

It was time to load up the Rolls. The leather satchel full of drill bits, my laptop bag, the petrol cans and the tube. They were all the essentials. They sat very neatly in the back of the car, leaving a lot of room. I didn’t have any clothes that fit, there was plenty of food around so I didn’t need any of those. My mind dimly said “camping cooker”, but there were plenty of opportunities to acquire one. I cast my mind around and thought about what to bring.

There were books, but books could be found anywhere too. If I was that hard up for them, I could break into a Barnes and Noble in the states and take whatever I wanted. Games were useless, and were all on Steam anyway... 

As I cast my eyes around my room, they eventually fell on my small shelf of Metal Gear Solid memorabilia. Posters from the original advertising runs and merchandising. Action figures and the like, still in their packages. I packed them all neatly and carefully off the shelf. They were rare. I wouldn’t find those in the USA easily. Mine.

And now I thought about it, there was my complete collection of Discworld books, all signed by the author himself. They would just HAVE to come as well, so that was another box. Mine.

And my complete Abnett run of Guardians of the Galaxy, trade paperbacks too, not an anthology collection… Mine.

Okay. So three small boxes of collectibles along with my valuable survival gear.

...and my yellow chocobo plush. Neon had the plush's partner, so it’d be wrong not to bring that too. And if I brought that, I’d have to bring McCloud, my tiny fox plush I’d had since I was five. Also Mine.

Right. Three small boxes of collectibles, my satchel, my laptop bag, three gas cans, a length of tubing and two adorable plushies. The essentials.

Oh, and a crowbar from the utility closet. Because crowbars are always useful things to have.

Right, there we go. Car as packed as it’s going to get without me taking my entire bedroom with me. It was time to hop into the driver’s seat and see if there were going to be any other problems, mirrors to adjust and so on. I very carefully opened the door, making extra sure that my big slicey claw hands didn’t scratch the paint, and hoisted myself inside.

There were… several problems. Feet, unable to touch the floor. Problem right here. Head, did not even crest the steering wheel. Problem right there. Arms, too small to grip the wheel or the gear stick. Problem right… everywhere.

I sighed, and bopped my head on the wheel, the horn beeped chirpily and didn’t reflect my mood in the slightest. Stupid horn. I was right, some adjustments were going to be needed.

I hate it when I’m right.

Okay, the most obvious thing was a booster seat. If I’m child sized, I’m going to need a child size seat. My feet can’t reach the pedals, even without the seat. That’s going to require… platform shoes? Coffee cans?

As for my arms, that one was easy. I could use my crowbar to shift gears…. or I COULD look for an automatic.

Nope. I’d decided on the Rolls and I was sticking to it. Gotta be decisive in the rapture!

Out of the car I hopped. It was around 5pm, still plenty of daylight for the summer. That was enough for one last journey outside, right? There was a supermarket just a little further past Curries, that was bound to have one.

Once more unto the breach.

A pair of bright green eyes stared at me from the top of the shed as I stepped outside yet again. Beth was watching, and hid as soon as I turned to look at her. I was hoping that she’d come around to me before I had to leave, and I vaguely thought about bringing her with me. I mean, we had an old cat-carrier in the shed. If I could get her to trust me, I could.

It was worth a shot. No sense in losing more family.

The sun was still pretty high in the sky, as befitting a hot sunny day in the UK. I figured I had a solid 4 hours of sunlight left as I scurried across the intersection by B&Q and Curries. As I turned the corner of Curries I could see the Sainsbury's supermarket straight ahead, it's empty car park stretched in front of it like the courtyard of Buckingham Palace. Whatever happened must have happened fairly early in the morning if there were no cars around. As I got a better look, I could see the staff car park still had a few cars parked up. Morning Shift. Which also means that some people were AWAKE for the doom of mankind. The thought sent shivers up my spines.

The main entrance was locked up tight. I vaguely thought about finding the trade entrance around the back, where the trucks would unload. It would have been far too much effort for next to no reason. It was time to get into the spirit of the apocalypse!

I hefted my crowbar in my tiny hands. Despite it being almost the size of a baseball bat in my claws, I still had enough strength in my minute frame to swing it decently. I took a few practice swings, adopting a batter's stance and feeling the air whistle past as I swung. Satisfied, I approached the glass door.

"Batter u-!" I began, before hesitating. The crowbar wavered in my arms.

I was being an idiot again. Crowbars are DESIGNED to open doors, not smash them open. I lowered the tool and flipped it over, jamming the staked end into the doorjamb and applying torque. Despite being as strong as I used to be, I didn’t have a lot of body weight. I tried again, digging my sharp toe-claws into the tarmac, where they stuck and provided grip.

I heaved again and the doors gave way quite suddenly, sliding into the open position.

And sending me, naturally, sprawling onto my ass.

“Hrmn. I worked smarter instead of harder, and I’m still getting shat on….” I grumbled as I picked myself up. Oh well. The door was open, there was no horrid mess of glass to worry about and the alarm was blaring, which threatened to make my ear holes bleed, but was not a huge issue at the moment.

I stepped into the supermarket, scratching one foot with the other to try and scrape off the tarmac that had inevitably glued itself to my feet. Seeing the place so empty was… eerie. Like I was in some sort of dream. A nightmare, where I was in a place I wasn’t supposed to be in. It was unsettling, but in a different way than B&Q’s huge, dark, corridor-like isles.

I knew Sainsbury’s well enough and before long, I found myself in the child-care department. Half baked thoughts flipped past idly in my head, wondering if any of the toddler clothes would fit me. I seemed to be warm enough in just my scales and, rather unsettlingly, there really wasn’t anything to cover up. I dimly remembered reptiles having concealed uhm… reproductive organs and assumed this was the same case here. At the very least, this assumption stopped me from having yet another thing to freak out about.

I gnawed on my drill bit thoughtfully, this thing had really done the trick in calming me down. Break the world down into problems, then break those down into smaller problems until you can manage them. Have a familiar action you can do to calm yourself. Advice I had learned a long time ago to combat my anxious nature. I dabbled with pen-twirling, but it made me more anxious when I would inevitably klutz it up and send the pen skittering across the room. I tried whistling, but my mother detested whistling and let everyone in a ten mile radius know if she heard any. Having an oral fixation, something to bite, was something I'd had since I was a child. I was the kid in high school that would destroy pens with their constant chewing. Gum worked too, but was too expensive to use as often as I needed to. So toothpicks were the obvious choice.

Toys, baby powder, feeding chairs… aha. Booster seats. Okay.

I dragged one of the less colorful and childish seats down from the shelf it was on, and flinched as it rather clumsily clattered onto the tiled floor.

A thought occurred. I had trouble carrying a few petrol cans home. The box was bigger and more awkward to carry then all of them combined. 

Problem right here.

Albeit a problem easily solved with a shopping trolley liberated from the car park outside. It was a bit of a hassle lifting the damn box into the trolley, but it was a lot easier to push the trolley then drag the box behind me. As I pushed the trolley out, I looked around at all the food, seeing if any struck my fancy. None of them did, until I passed the bakery. The morning shift apparently had enough time to get the first lot of baking done that morning, so the acrid scent of charcoal lead me to it. I slipped myself behind the counter and checked the small work space behind it.

There was some raw dough prepped to go into the oven, which had gone hard and gross due to not being touched for the majority of the day. Inside the oven itself, there was the scent of carbon. I flipped the emergency “off” switch and let the oven cool down, while nobody would be using this place again, the last thing I wanted was to see a part of my hometown get burned down by me leaving an oven on full blast.

I helped myself to a couple of steak pies that had been left on a hotplate ready for display, suddenly being hit full force by the amazing power of hunger. At least my taste in food still seemed to be the same, I thought as I brushed the gravy stains from my mouth.

I could still smell the carbonized bread from the oven. It didn’t smell that bad, to be honest. I’d often burn my bacon just a little bit so the fatty edges would get carbonized, it added a bit of extra crispiness to it, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I’d never eat plain charcoal all by itself.

That was just weird.

My hunger sated, I pushed my cart towards the exit. Past the alcohol aisle. Bottles in all shapes and sizes looked at me, with a hundred labels and a hundred colors.

So much free booze… tempting. Very tempting…. At the very end of the aisle, I had to give in. I left my shopping trolley at one end and paced back up, looking in awe. I could have anything I wanted, without paying. After all, it’d be criminal to leave all this to never be drank again. It’s not like I’d take much either. On one hand was ales, beers and ciders. I cleared out that isles stock of Fursty Ferret ale, it being my favourite and knowing I’d not acquire again. A solid twenty five bottles sat in my shopping trolley now. I’d have to make a note to load up on more when I reached the airport. I wouldn’t get them in the US.

But as I was leaving, a label caught my eye at the top of the whiskey shelf. Snowdonia Single Malt. My father was given a bottle of it for his fortieth birthday about ten years ago. I was fourteen. He wasn’t much for whiskey, and so it sat untouched in our liquor cabinet. He flat out said I could have it when I expressed interest. It was the first time I was trusted with my own bottle of alcohol. My father realized I was sensible enough not to do anything stupid. I didn’t have many fond moments with my father, but we were both mutual sufferers of the matriarch: my mother, his wife. She cared for us in her own bizarre way. She kept forcing us to spend time together, said that I’d “miss us when we’re dead”. A sneaking realization dawned upon me.

I kinda did.

I was churning through so many emotions right now my anxiety riddled brain had fully processed everything, that I had lost my family, my parents, for good. Then it stowed away the appropriate emotional response for when I had the luxury to worry about the things I couldn’t control. It was a coping mechanism.

And in a small way, that made me feel better, knowing that I did feel some sense of loss for my family. It meant I wasn’t a selfish, heartless bastard. I just needed to sort out every other problem first before I could grieve. I could live with that.

So in the honor of my father's memory, I began scaling the spirit shelves. This naturally resulted in the odd bottle of vodka and gin tipping over and smashing on the floor, but who cares? I highly doubted glass would slice up my feet anymore. My tiny frame was incredibly cumbersome, but surprisingly enough, my tail helped act as a counter-balance. Which upon reflection, is pretty much what tails are for.

I clawed my way to the top shelf and liberated a couple of the treasured bottles. Even better, with a bit of coaxing and with some difficulty, I was able to grip them both fairly firmly with my tail, the scales snagging the lids of the bottles. It didn’t seem to be built to be that limber, and it hurt like the dickens having to flex those new muscles that hard. My feet crunched when they touched the ground again, the tinkling of broken glass echoing in the now silent supermarket (now the burglar alarm on the main door had finally stopped). It was a blessing my feet were all claws and scales now, because if I was a human stepping barefoot on broken glass covered in incredibly strong alcohol, I would be in for a very unpleasant afternoon and a trip to the ER. Except there was no ER anymore. I was very lucky indeed.

I placed one of the bottles in the trolley and turned the other around in my hands. The taste held a special meaning to me. I'd often associated it with my finally becoming an adult at the ripe old age of fourteen. It was probably going to be one of the last comforts of home I'd ever get and it had been one HELL of a long day. Heck, it’s not like I was planning on leaving until tomorrow and I knew how much I could stomach. I knew my limits.

The cap came off easily enough, making a satisfying “thunk” noise as the cork popped out of the bottle. The familiar aroma wafted into my nostrils like an old and treasured friend that had stopped by for a cup of tea and a chat. It was relaxing, any tension my anxiety had built up faded away quite quickly. I could never describe the scent of alcohol. I knew the smells I preferred were considered “hoppy” and “malty” but I couldn’t tell you the difference between the two. The good whiskey smelt like good whiskey. What do you want from me? I’m not a frickin’ critic here.

I tipped the booze back and took a hearty sip, coughing a little. The stuff was a lot stronger than I remembered, or maybe it was my new taste buds? I used to liken it to drinking fire, but this had a lot more of a burn to it than I remembered.

Acid reflux hit my throat to greet the old friend. It seemed like it wasn’t the reunion I was hoping for. A squabble had broken out in my throat.

I hiccuped.

A foot of flame erupted from my mouth.

I dropped the bottle in shock, definitely more of a burn than I recalled, hah!

Hah….

OHFUCKINGCHRISTIJUSTSPATOUTFUCKINGFIRE

This newfound sledgehammer of anxiety churned my stomach even more, causing even more hiccups. More gouts of flame erupted from my mouth. Clamping my claws over my snout stifled one, until the next hiccup sent a stream shooting out of my nostrils...

Right onto the alcohol soaked floor. Of the spirits section of the alcohol aisle.

The alcohol soaked floor I was currently standing in the middle of.

I’d say I was paralyzed with fear, but the hiccups kind of detracted from the moment.

There was a rushing “fwump” and then the floor began dancing red and orange.


....P-problem right here!

> 4 In Which Sick Fires Are Dealt. Two Hearts Break
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay. Okay. Let’s review here…

I just hiccuped out a bolt of flame.
I just set an aisle of alcoholic spirits on fire.
Don’t panic. Panic breeds more fire.
Try not to catch fire.
Fire!

As the flames licked the shelving and caressed the bottles, I tried my best to follow mental note number three. But try as I might, I just couldn’t cope. Each time I attempted to force myself to stop hiccupping, I gagged, which would release an even bigger torrent of flame that ended up popping more bottles of spirits.

I slumped to the floor, my legs sprawled in a childish attempt at sitting, and tried to focus on my breathing. In, out. In, out. In, ou-thwush! My stomach was roiling like a perfect, acidic storm. My breathing was torn and ragged, interspersed with painful, vomiting gouts of flaming anxiety. The fire danced a hypnotic pattern on the spilt alcohol on the floor, which would have been relaxing if it wasn’t happening a few inches in front of my face.

I couldn’t move. Each time I so much as quivered, my stomach rebelled and added to the inferno. I curled up into a fetal ball and cried in pain, in fear, in anxiety. The fire alarm finally kicked into high gear, assaulting my ear-holes with high pitched screaming that totally helped my mental well-being in a positive way. The fire had spread to other isles now, and the dancing flaming floor had cut me off from my shopping trolley and the exit. I was trapped. Helpless. Useless.

A two for one sale on bottles of cheap store-brand plonk smoldered and curled until nothing remained but charred ash parchment that blew away in the scorching hot air conditioned breeze. If I didn’t move now, I was… hah! I was toast!

One time, in an age long past, I had sat in my school’s library, browsing a book of poetry. From Hemingway to Poe, I was enthralled. A particular poem had captured my attention, a wonderfully inspiring, self-determined poem written by a Victorian poet by the name of William Ernest Henley. The poem was called “Invictus”. That poem had enraptured me and jammed itself in my memory for eternity. Whenever I found the pressures of the world bearing down upon me, I would repeat it.

I searched blindly through my memory to try and find those comforting words. They would give me the power, I knew, to leave.

Which of course, is why my mind drew a complete blank.

I quaked again and spat out another bolt of fire. I tried again, searching for something, anything I could use. What If-...

...that’d do. It was only a couple of stanzas, but it would do.

I inhaled deeply as the storm of my stomach subsided for the moment. I pulled myself onto my taloned feet. Before me, the floor of fire expanded, now lapping gently a few inches away from my toes. I took another deep breath as I closed my eyes and remembered…

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!” “

I shouted into the smoke cloud that had become the aisle. It was only a couple of lines, but it would do. It quieted my internal struggle long enough. The churning in my stomach gave way to steely resolve. I was filled with determination.

I ran through the flaming puddle-lake of alcohol, chanting those same lines over and over and over again. I chanted them as I slammed into my shopping trolley. I chanted them as I rode it’s momentum to the exit. I chanted them as I shot through the pried open entrance, belching acrid smoke like the Black Gate of Mordor. I chanted them as it slowed to a halt in the parking lot, along with my heart rate.

“Hold on… hold on… hold on…”

I repeated to myself, my body going limp from exhaustion as I collapsed to the asphalt floor of the parking lot. Watching the smoke billow out of the front entrance. Out of the air conditioning vents on the roof. The siren song of the fire alarm was still just as piercing out here. The building, shrieking in pain for someone to save it. Nobody would come.

I was still queasy, but I was out. Isn’t that what mattered?

“....just… just fuck…”

Then it struck me. The book I had recited it from listed If- as a form of victorian satire, poking fun of the ludicrous standards set by society. I laughed loudly, openly, hysterically. It wasn’t really all that funny, but the silliness of the situation just made me laugh constantly. A satire gave me the determination to survive.

But hey, I was still alive!

And despite a small coating of ash, my booster seat and bottles of ale were safe too. The building was in it’s own lot, disconnected from anywhere else, which meant the fire couldn’t spread out and burn the whole town down, so that was also a good reason not to panic and to look on the bright side.

But staring at the smoke billowing up into the afternoon sky, I didn’t feel very cheery.

------------

“Hey love…” I mumbled haggardly into my headset. The Rolls was fully packed up and ready to go outside, but I was too tired from the trials of the day. It was close to 8pm, and I was absolutely knackered. Even if I wasn’t, there was no way I’d be able to drive at night in this body. It just wasn’t happening.

“...you sound like you’ve had a hard day. Have you had a hard day?! I mean you probably have, considering, but- just- just tell me everything!”

I regaled him of my epic tale, which was much rather akin to a legendary failure. He fussed, as I expected him to, but there wasn’t really much he could do except whine. Which he did. Liberally.

“You could have been killed!”

“Yes, but let’s focus on the part where I VOMIT FIRE when I’m anxious.”

“But you’re anxious like, all the time!”

“It only seems to really surface when I’m at my worst.”

“So in other words… it only shows up when it can make the situation worse.”

I sighed. “Sure seems that way. I need to stop worrying, but this entire situation is really beginning to damage my calm.”

“Well, you picked up those drill bits, right? Try gnawing on them when you feel bad.”

I’d almost forgotten the drill bits. They were indeed sitting in my satchel in the car.

“...hah, you’re right. I’d totally forgotten I had them. They honestly didn’t taste too bad now, is that weird or what?” I started giggling as soon as I asked, I knew EXACTLY what he was going to say.

“My darling, of course it is, you’re the wei- “


Suddenly, while he was mid-sentence, the loud noise of a phone hanging up pierced my ears. The steam client had hung up the call. My laughter caught in my throat. A cold feeling of dread washed over me.

“No. No no no no no no not now!” I whined quietly.

“C’mon…” I begged. “Please…?’

The client remained grey. A pop up indicated I was not connected to the Internet.  My throat constricted. My old friend Grief welled up as I buried my head in my hands, my talons scratching furiously at my forehead, raking across the scales.

Typical.

I knew how to deal with Grief. 

Unfair.

I had spent my whole life fighting it.

What’s a tiny pathetic firestarter like you going to do now?

Push it down. 

You’re on your own.

Compress it.

None of your wonderful “friends” are going to help you.

Until that useless grief turns into fuel.

Even if they wanted to.

A venomous, toxic fuel.

The world simply doesn’t want you to be happy.

The adrenaline of the perpetually mediocre.

So where does that leave you?

High octane rage.

“Goodbye darling.” I choked out as I shutdown my desktop for the last time. “I love you.”

I climbed into bed and pulled my shredded sheets around me. The grief had already began to fester. I’d had a vintage stock left to mature for years. There was only one way to see him again.

“gweld chi cyn bo hir.”

I'll make it. I had to. That's all there was to say.

I glared into the night until sleep dared take me.

------------------

I woke up at 6am. I tore the rags of my blanket off myself for the second time and made one last check of the house. Despite my fatigue the previous night, I’d gotten everything well in order. I didn’t miss a thing.

“Mrowr”

...well, one thing, I suppose.

Beth stared with interest on the roof of the car, catching the first of the morning sun. I stared back at her, my mind racing. Should I bring her? Could I bring her? What if I brought her and had to leave her behind? Would that be fair? Does she even like me now?

Beth, for her part, yawned and started cleaning herself. At least one of us wasn’t suffering a moral quandary.

“Hey Missy.” I spoke soothingly, approaching the car. Even my slightest motion put her on edge. She used to be an abused animal and would always freak out at sudden movements. I guess I really did bother her a lot. Trapping her in a car with me and lugging her halfway across the world was just plain cruel, and that was the best possible outcome if she came.

No. Best to leave her here.

“...bringing you along is going to be bad for the both of us.”

I reached out a hand for her to sniff and, like a shot, she was off the roof and had vanished into the bushes.

The only member of your family still alive and she hates you.

The last thing I did before locking the house for the last time, I filled up her bowl and cracked open the kitchen window. Her dry food was on the table and the bag was open. She’d find it eventually.

Starting the Rolls was a challenge. Most of the cars in the UK were gear-sticks, not automatics, and the Rolls was no exception. The crowbar I had procured made it a little easier to reach the stick, and the stilts I’d assembled worked for changing gears, but there was no way I could stop the car without stalling it and I certainly wasn’t comfortable at going at any speed over 30 miles an hour. Getting where I needed to go was going to take longer than expected, but progress was progress.

The car lurched into life, and with a fair dint of effort, I had pulled it out into the street. On reflex, I thanked God for the lack of other drivers. I would have been absolutely screwed if I’d tried this a few days ago. But hey, a few days ago I wouldn’t have been a tiny lizard.

The Rolls had a very good sound system, taking phones, USB sticks and CDs. I flicked my eye into the footwell and spied a few albums stowed away. There was only one I was really interested in listening in at the moment, and I knew for an almost certainty it would already be in the CD tray.

I leaned over and flicked the play switch and was immensely gratified to know I was right.

[youtube= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a01QQZyl-_I]

Freddie and Bowie. What a dream team. What a song. Then again, Queen was objectively the best band to ever grace the earth and Freddy Mercury was the patron saint of vocalists. Dad was the one that got me into Queen. They were practically all he played when he was at the wheel, or even when he was teaching me how to drive. There were some really great times, when it was just me and him…

The plan was to turn onto the A483 towards Chester, and then onwards to Manchester and it’s Airport. Manchester Airport was the third largest airport in England behind Heathrow and Gatwick. If any airport in the UK had the very specific type of private jet I’d been training myself to haphazardly fly, it’d probably be on the list. If that failed, well… it was a 6 hour drive to London, at the very least. Plus another two for when I naturally got lost.

But first, I promised myself I’d make a detour.

Five minutes later, I was parked outside my Nan’s house. A small, terraced bungalow in a nice and quiet residential area in Gwersyllt, fairly close to where she had grown up her entire life. She had always found her old house too big and empty with her six children all grown up, so she sold it about ten years back to buy this place. It was nice and cozy enough. A little cramped, but it didn’t bother her one bit. It was less house to clean.

I’d take her shopping every Thursday after work, without fail. After years and years of babysitting, I had to. I just enjoyed her company. She saw how her daughter treated her children, and blamed herself completely. The cripplingly alcoholic and abusive husband probably had more to do with my mother’s mental landscape than my Nan ever did.

I looked through her curtains for any signs of life. Her mesh curtains were pulled tight, as always. She liked nosing through the window to spy on passers-by, which seemed to me to be the tradition of old people the world over. Another tradition seemed to be the large cluster of kitschy crap plastered over her windowsill and porch. Not garden gnomes or flamingos, but clay caterpillars, butterflies and hedgehogs. A black and white clay cat from St. Andrews, Scotland stared back at me glassy eyed. I’d bought it for her because she used to own a cat that looked just like it.

The door was unlocked, as it always was. I quietly let myself in.
> 5 In Which A Shocking Revelation Occurs
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Half an hour later, I was driving down the A483. My plan was to drive up through Chester and on to Manchester. It should take about an hour of driving to get to the Airport, give or take my handicapped driving ability. I had thought more than once that I should have searched for a disability car, before remembering that no, I'd decided that I was going to use this car so that's what I was going to do. I was committed.

The black and white cat stared at me from it’s new position on the dashboard. It was named Sox, after my Nan’s old cat. Sox was about 3 years old when he showed up in my Nan’s backyard on my 7th birthday. I had spent a lot of time with her in my youth, my family was always too busy to pick me up from work and she lived just down the road. Probably spent most of my youth in that big cold house. While Sox lived at my Nan’s house, it was always agreed that he was my cat. He’d spit and hiss at anyone who came close, but spent every moment he could curled up in my lap, purring all the while. He looked a lot like Beth, which filled me with regret. I should have taken her with me. Either way. A good few years ago, nature did it’s thing and one of my scant childhood friends left me behind.

“Just like everybody else.” I muttered to myself.

Yeah, keep feeling sorry for yourself. It’s what you’re good at.

At this stage, the Queen CD had given way to Hammer To Fall. An under-rated song often thought to be about the inevitably nuclear end of the cold war. Well Freddie, humanity ended. It just wasn’t the way you expected.

The countryside rolled green as the carriageway cut through fields to reach England. Not too far away was the rather long bridge over the Dee Valley. In the distance, the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct stood proud across the gap. Built around 210 years ago in the middle of the industrial revolution, it ranked as a national heritage site and a point of pride for Wales. In that moment, as I crossed the bridge, I wondered just how long it was going to survive without anyone around to maintain it.

Not long. You’re probably the last Welsh speaker on the planet, you twpsyn. You’re barely fluent. The language is going to die with you. The last surviving piece of Welsh culture is going to be a useless, anxiety ridden failure.

Pressure built just above my eyes, pressing against my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed on the brakes. It was already dangerous to brake on a bridge but thankfully there was no oncoming traffic to worry about, so the car rolled to a stop uneventfully.

Breathe in. Count to three. Breathe out. Come on, you’ll never get out of here at this rate. You need to focus on the task at hand. You’re never this bad, White. A little something like the end of the world shouldn’t get you so upset.

I opened my eyes. I’d veered slightly into the oncoming lane, but that wasn’t an issue anymore. So I had that going for me, which was nice.

Just slightly off in the distance at the end of the bridge was the sign proclaiming a welcome to Cheshire, England. I bonked my head on the steering wheel, electing a chirpy honk, before leaning back in my seat and gazing hazily at the rear-view mirror. The sign proclaiming “Croeso I Cymru” was about a hundred feet behind me, the Welsh flag stencilled below it as a blurry red blob. As I focused more on the flag, something inside me clicked.

The door flew open as I jumped out and sprinted to the sign. What would have taken me thirty seconds before took me upwards of a minute to scurry up to the sign.

I stared at it.

The red dragon stared back.

I continued to stare at it.

It stared back awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable about this situation.

I touched it, to make sure it was real. It was.

I touched myself, to make sure I was real. I was.

“Oh shit.” I said flatly. “I’m a fucking dragon.”

A minute later, I had scooted myself back into the driver’s seat of the Rolls. As I went about my pre-driving ritual of balancing my stilts on the pedals I couldn’t help but think on the revelation I had just experienced.

The idea was kinda farfetched all things considered, but it did make a strange kind of sense. I may not have wings or be terribly fearsome, but I could most certainly breathe fire. After holding my arm up to the stencil confirmed I was the same coloration it made me even more certain.

y ddraig coch. The red dragon.

Me. THE Welsh dragon. The mere thought made me swell with pride.

The car lurched forward as it beetled its way over the bridge into England. I wound down the drivers window, stuck out my head and shouted at the top of my lungs, Queen blaring from the radio.

“I’M A FUCKIN’ DRAGON SON! WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The horn tootled in triumph as I cleared the bridge and entered Cheshire.

It’d be a long time before I saw home again.

Approximately one hour later, it occurred to me that I had not eaten a single thing since this whole business started and that traditionally eating was something I needed to do to ensure my continued existence. Shortly afterwards, I turned off the motorway and entered a service station. The motorways served as the arteries of the entire country, so naturally they needed places where people could cram fast food down their gullets and clog their own arteries with cheeseburgers.

The building was a large 80’s plasticy affair, with a connecting tunnel linking the two buildings across the motorway. It had clearly put it’s glory days behind it and would probably collapse sooner than the Aqueduct, but this is one piece of human culture I don’t think anybody would wholly miss unless they were particularly attached to lukewarm coffee.

After a tense moment with the petrol pumps, I managed to get the car fueled up. A “No Smoking” sign loomed accusingly above me, which I did my best to ignore. The petrol tank was filled and the car was sated. Now it was my turn. I was under the impression these places never closed, but sure enough the sliding glass doors refused to open. A brick through one of the doors soon changed its mind and I gained entry.

Most of the service areas were gated off, which irritated me. I had chosen this service station because I wanted to gorge myself on McDonald's fries but the place was locked up, sure as sure. The only place that was open was the convenience store, which had its gate half-raised. It was enough for a normally sized person to duck under and I found it a little embarrassing that I could stroll under it unimpeded. The welsh dragon shouldn’t be so tiny!

I also noticed that the light was on inside the store. Clearly someone was still inside it when the event hit. A copy of the early edition of the newspaper and a long cold coffee confirmed it. The Prime Minister grinned back at me like some kind of enormous waste of space from the front page of the paper as I checked around. Someone had definitely been in here. That much was certain. There was no sign of their body at all, no clothes. No keys. Nothing. A lot of doors were going to be missing their keys now. Which meant a lot of breaking and entering. Not that I minded, I was getting quite good at it now.

I helped myself to a few chilled pastries that were packaged up and ready to eat. The first was a chicken curry pastry slice which I sniffed hesitantly. I’d always found these things too spicy for my tastes.

But hey. I was a dragon now. How bad can spice be?

I bit into it.

“….NGGGAAGH!”

Apparently I’m still a little bitch, dragon or not. A small amount of smoke emanated from my nostrils in complaint.

I abandoned the half-eaten curry pastry and tried an old favourite. You could never go wrong with a sausage roll.

Upon biting into it, it tasted better than I had expected. I normally preferred the things cooked instead of cold, but it tasted just like it had been freshly oven baked. I watched the smoke from my nose trail upwards to the tiled ceiling and wondered. It made sense after all, I must have some form of biological furnace inside of me. It only made sense that it’d be capable of cooking my food as I ate it.

Of course this ruled ice cream out of the potential food equation, which made me pout.

A distressing thought occurred. If I cooked food as I ate it, was I still capable of drinking? A liberated bottle of water from the stores cooler helped me test the results. I could certainly drink just fine, though water was going to taste lukewarm to me forever. On the plus side, the smoke from my nostrils had turned into steam vapor I could blow rings with.

A bottle of coke helped me test things further. It certainly tasted a lot different now and left a horrible taste in my mouth. The best guess I could come up with was a little bit of the drink had caramelized and lined the inside of my mouth. I wondered just how badly alcohol would react to my new biology and decided that now wasn’t the place to test it out.

After eating my fill of various pastries, sandwiches and bags of crisps I left the service station a little messier than when I found it. It was all going to rot eventually anyway, cleaning up would have been an exercise in futility. The Rolls had been waiting patiently while I conducted my science experiments. It was mid-morning, and I wanted to hit the airport by midday.

The car trundled out of the station and hit the motorway once again. I used to zip down this road at around 50 and 60 miles per hour in my old, beat up clio. This prime beast of engineering was only going at 30 miles an hour maximum and it was really quite a sad display, watching it slouch along like an apathetic tortoise. The sun was high in the sky as I passed through Chester, it’s roman walls and beautiful storybook architecture glinting back at me. It was another beautiful day. Chester should have been rife with life, teeming from everyone from holiday makers to street sweepers. It’s streets were dead, just like Wrexham, with only the skittering of litter in the wind to show any sign of movement.

I had never intended to stick around the place for long. Manchester was still several hours out but something inside of me made me stop and look, probably for old times sake. Wrexham was a boring down in an anti-fun deadzone. I remember Lightfox trying to find a card-game or comic book store for me to hang around in when I was depressed, but he discovered a perfect bubble around my town. No comic book stores, no tabletop stores, no Magic. Nothing. The closest stores were in Chester and I occasionally felt social enough to hang around there. My haunts were all locked up tight, with no method of entry sans crowbar or brick. I peered through the windows of the Games Workshop I frequented and saw their display models staring back at me. Well painted Warlord Titans and Tyranid Hive Tyrants sat in their cases and just beyond them, a large table full of Imperial Guardsmen. Over five hundred individual models, all painted far better than I ever could. My Guardsmen were congealing together slowly in my attic back home, never to be played with again.

I drove past Laserquest, the local laser-tag joint. I had a few birthdays in that backlit, fog-machined warehouse. The faces changed over the years. Always few and disinterested. Friends tended not to stick around. The only things they wanted were free pizza and my videogames.

Still. In those short times, I was surrounded by people I thought cared about me. I was happy.

I clenched my jaw and a metallic plink sounded as the drillbit I had been gnawing on was bitten in two. That single bit had lasted me almost two days. As a replacement toothpick, it filled the gap and then some. I set about patting myself down looking for the big box of bits I had scrounged from the DIY store back home. I flicked a fresh one into my mouth and gave a tentative nibble.

The same electric tingle taste the last bit had, along with… something else? It tasted almost like mint, except almost ten times as refreshing. It made my tastebuds sing. My eyes grew wider and my breathing heavier as I continued to gnaw on this singular drillbit. What was this?! Was it coated in some kind of poison? Some kind of mineral oil?

I fished around my bag for the box again, upending it right there in the street as the bits went flying. I scratched around for the plastic package the bit had came in, cracking the case in my tense talon-like grip.

Durabit Stainless Steel Drillbits. Diamond tipped.

Diamond tipped.

I ripped the bit out of my mouth with much effort, fighting my body the whole way. I was a boring kid, I had never done drugs at all, or anything similar to them. But now, I suddenly knew how they felt.

I squinted at the tip of the bit.

Diamond glinted back at me.

I spent a few minutes staring at the bit, contemplating it. The urge to stick it back in my mouth was unreal. Why did it taste so good?

ydych yn draig, wrth gwrs mae'n blasu'n dda.

I was a dragon, or I thought I was. Maybe that had something to do with it? Could it be that my new physiology was geared more towards gemstones and minerals than actual food? There was a jewelry store nearby, perhaps that held some answers…

A brick cascaded through the storefront glass of Precious Things, a local jewelers and watchmaker. A moment later, I squeezed my way through the small hole it had made in it’s path. I was beginning to grow reliant on my scaly armor, trusting it to soak up the worst of any damage I took. In fact, upon hitting the floor I examined myself. Even crawling through several buildings worth of glass my scales were almost pristine with only the dullest of marks to show they had been scratched. Looking closer, I could see the sheeny coat had already re-covered some of my older scratchmarks. I suppose my scales healed naturally over time, like my fingernails used to.

Wait a moment, fingernails? I reached out and traced my talons across the glass. I was rewarded with an earsplitting shriek of cutting glass. How the hell did the cat-burglars get away with it in the movies?! That noise was deafening! It made me gnash my teeth, but sure enough I could cut the glass with my fingertips.

I carefully facepalmed. There was never any need to use crowbars or bricks or anything of the sort after all. I flexed my fingers and gazed at my claws clinking together. At the very least, I supposed it was quieter than a brick through a window. I would really have to be careful. It’d be so typical of me to poke myself in the eye and blind myself, though that also got me wondering about how shielded my eyes were. I was assuming I’d either be flying or digging or whatever at some point, a stressful activity that would result in debris and grit in my eyes. Surely I’d have some form of protective layer over them? Only time would tell, since I was certainly not brave enough to test that theory out by myself.

I gathered my wits and began taking in my surroundings. Precious Things was a relatively small, local jewelers, but even it had many, many cases full of various gems and jewels. I salivated unconsciously as I set about them. I started cutting cases left and right, clumsily slicing through them with my claws. Several times I slipped, my fist going through the glass and adding it’s alarm to the cacophony of the alarm outside.

The first thing I sampled was a ruby, set into a gold ear-ring. The gold was inedible by my standards, or at least it was in it’s current state. Thankfully it was weak enough for me to bite the gem out with ease. The ruby fizzled on my tongue, tasting very similar to strawberry glucose, like a flavored candy ring, if it were somehow mixed with meth or something. The small gem was nowhere near enough to sate my appetite, and five more soon followed it. It felt as it my tongue was popping and fizzing with all the flavor.

Diamonds tasted like mint, as was already established by the drill bits.
Rubies were vaguely strawberry flavored.
Emeralds tasted like apples.
Quartz tasted like sugar, almost flat out.

Those were the first few I tasted. There were many more, but their tastes were drowned out in the hurricane of ecstasy I found myself in. I gorged myself on every single item in the store, spitting out piles of chewed up gold and broken watches. I couldn’t control myself. I had never, ever experienced a need like this before. The need to consume it all. Pressure was building just slightly higher than my stomach and before I knew it, I erupted flame.
Flame far bigger and stronger than any of my previous gouts spewed forth from my mouth, almost invisible to my eye except for the sheer eye watering heat. In that moment, I felt like a spaceship igniting its burners. It lasted for what felt like an eternity, a good, solid minute.

The torrent of heat eventually came to a trickle, until finally it was quelled with nothing but a series of smokey burps remaining. The storefront wasn’t on fire, mostly because that implied that there was anything left to burn. Everything, from the brick walls, the plate glass and the wooden showcases was just gone. The wood had vanished, not even leaving a trace of ash. The glass and brick had melted into a congealing pile of molten slag.

A small cooling sensation lapped at my feet. Looking down I could see the liquefied remains of the discarded gold pile pooling around the room. I stared in amazement, trying to exclaim my disbelief but all that came out was more smoke filled hiccups. My throat was raw and I wasn’t sure a bag of losanges could even come close to fixing it. My coughing and spluttering sounded like Wolf, He Who Gargles Gravel. The subsequent gigglefit of that thought turned into yet more coughing and spluttering. 

“D-...damn.”

The break-room of Precious Things contained a thankfully still operating sink, which I proceeded to stick my head under until I could hear the scales around my mouth pinging from the change in temperature. I wasn’t even sure I had a tongue until I sluiced some water around my mouth. It was there alright, apparently made of tougher stuff than my old one. Spitting out the water, I noticed it was soot black. I guessed that the heat charred the insides good, but careful probing revealed no pain in the slightest.

Well duh. It was built to vomit out this stuff. You could probably gargle lava. D-don’t gargle lava though.

That would be bad.

Flopping on my back, I felt the adrenaline die down.

HOLY SHIT THAT WAS SO COOL.
> 6 In Which A Dragon Learns About Flying
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         
Riding the power high of my visit to Precious Things, I beetled down the motorway at full tilt, a whopping 40 miles an hour. I could do anything! Hell, if I was slightly more grown I bet I could have flown my own dang self.

I had fire!

“Hotter than Olympus, melt the crap outta Icarus! Who cares about the sun, it’s me you should watch for son!”

Yes, I was rapping. Badly. Seriously. Don’t judge, you have no idea what sort of a pick-me-up belching thermite does to a person.

The sign for Manchester Airport caught my attention. I swerved the Rolls over to the off-ramp and started looking for a service entrance. I had visited this airport many, many times in the past and knew the public areas of each terminal inside and out, but I didn’t have much experience actually on the tarmac. I had been on the ground outside maybe twice, walking from a plane to a waiting bus. But it made sense, didn’t it? Cars had to make their way onto the runway somehow.

After half an hour of driving around the perimeter of the airport, I finally spied a chain-link gate all padlocked up with a big, heavy duty lock built into them. I parked up and left the car idling as I examined the lock. I raked it with my claws experimentally and clicked my tongue in disdain to find it was made of far stronger stuff than I was used to so far. I cursed myself for not bringing bolt-cutters.

Only one thing for it.

I took several deep breaths, trying to raise my gorge and coax out a flame. I had never actually brought the flame out intentionally before, and had no idea of how to reliably do it. 
There must have been some method to it, otherwise what was even the point?

In. Out. Nothing.

It only happened when I was full of gems, or when I was anxious.

In. Out. Nothing.

I had a bag of gems stowed away in my car, but I didn’t want to give into my new-found addiction JUST yet. I wanted to see if I could do this without them.

In. Out. Nothing. Time for something different.

It occurred to me that the thing that tied those two scenarios together was what felt like acid reflux. Indigestion. Instead of taking several deep breaths, I took one big one and swallowed it.
I forced out the resulting belch, a tiny shoot of flame accompanying it, gently caressing the lock.

Well, it’s a start, I suppose.

I retrieved some cola from the car. It may taste a little poorer now, but it was carbonated. Experiment time! I chugged a full two liter bottle of the stuff, surprised at how much my tiny body could put away. That was easily enough coke to last the old me a day or so, but I took it all without much complaint.

My stomach gurgled and churned. 

Well, some complaint. Good. I felt the gas in my chest raise.

BRAAAAARP!

An impressive jet of flame spouted forward, heating the lock. I watched as it slowly turned redder and redder until it was glowing white hot.

And then the flame died out. The lock began to cool, still intact.

In frustration, I jingled it, to see if it was loose at all. In fact, the opposite had happened.
The lock had melted shut permanently.

“....ain’t that just a pickled peach?”

There was nothing else for it. I had tried, but there was only one sure fire method of breaking that lock. A short trip back to the car revealed a small velvet bag, plundered from the jewelry store. It’s innards were packed with all forms of gemstones and jewels. I carefully selected a small handful of less impressive diamonds and sapphires like I would have normally have shaken mints out of a box of tic-tacs.

Yes. Come on, give me just the little kick I need...

Tic-tacs were a good analogy, as the diamonds had quite a minty taste to them and made a refreshing crunch in my mouth. I shuddered involuntarily as the rush overtook me. I couldn’t help but twist the corners of my mouth into a smile as my mouth was forced open by the sheer invisible fury of the blast. Nowhere near as impressive as the first time, but I couldn’t help but imagine what would be.

The lock was a molten pile of slag. It was soft to the touch, almost like papier-mâché. If papier-mâché was actually iron oozing between the tips of your talons. I was amazed at just how little heat I felt. I was staring at a pile of molten slag in my hands like it was a pile of putty with nothing but the sensation of a slightly too-hot faucet running over my fingers. I gazed rapturously as a single glistening red blob dripped from my index finger and onto the ground, where it hissed into a dull grey splotch.

Wiping the rest of the iron off of my hands while it was still soft, I yanked the fence open.
The runway was clear. Time to find a plane.

The only question was, where?

Well, everywhere obviously. This was an airport after all.

I noticed the lack of crashed jets on the tarmac. I was correct in my earlier assumption that occupied vehicles had vanished as well. What else did that apply to? Trains? Trams? Ski Lifts? How many rails were missing their vehicles now? There was certainly a dearth of planes to choose from. I angrily noted a lack of private jets on the runway. They must be in one of the smaller hangars dotted off to the sides.

It was at that moment I was struck by just how freakin’ large airports are. It was a five minute drive to the other side of the runway to the smaller hangers. The huge terminal building stretched out for miles, creating a courtyard where some of the bigger planes were berthed for boarding. I could see the connecting bridges hooked up to a couple of them, but they were rare. Maybe three of the big ones in total.

I swore. Whenever I had been here, it was always full and always moving. Then again, all of those planes were in motion, they had people inside of them.

After a few hours of fruitlessly searching the mini hangers for the precise type of jet I needed, I decided to tinker with one of the few small planes in the area, and out of all of THEM, only one of them had a decent amount of fuel in them. Or rather, far more importantly, it was the only one that had its damn door already open.

But… why? It seemed far too convenient, especially for me. This is the sort of luck Light would have experienced. I poked around the mini hangar, finding a scheduled flight plan in the tiny, boxlike office attached to the main chamber. Apparently this plane was part of a small chartered company, and was scheduled to take a bunch of VIPs home to the United Arab Emirates. I cast my eyes back to the small jet in the hangar.

Yeah. That’d probably do it.

Let’s see… the UAE was a good 8 hours’ flight away from where I was currently. Which was roughly around the same length of time I was airborne to get to America. The little plane wouldn’t get me to California, but it might get me to...Florida.

I shuddered involuntarily.

It seemed like the crew for the flight were right in the middle of prepping it for its trip. A clipboard with a half-filled checklist was located next to what I assumed was the fuel pump, which was still hooked up.

It was simple enough to follow the instructions to uncouple the hose from the plane. Unfortunately, as the smell hit my nostrils I realised I had made an assumption.
This pump was not hooked up to the fuel tank.

Of course, the big stencil of the word “SEPTIC” should have given it away.

Blech.

As it turns out, the jet was already pumped up full of fuel and ready to go. The last few things on the checklist were emptying the onboard facilities and general tidying, and who even cared about those?

Sure, I’d gotten some unspeakably unsanitary crap on my hands, but thankfully my body’s new natural reaction to wanting to throw up handily dealt with that. I mean, yeah, I had to deal with the smell of burning feces, but at least my hands were clean now! And probably sterilized too, come to think about it….

I climbed up the staircase with some difficulty and noted the plush, fancy leather interior.

I also noted with some relief that the cockpit was also open. It would have been just so typical to make it this far and find it closed, but then again, with claws like these I would have found a way to open it regardless. I mean, with enough force I could probably have talon-punched the lock, if there was one.

I entered the cockpit.

Good, good. Okay so. Small list of problems.
Seat waaaay too big, obviously.
I don’t know how to actually close the outer door, with it’s attached stairwell.
I HAVE. NO IDEA. WHAT THESE LIGHTS MEAN.

I stared blankly at the panel. It looked like the bastard child of a nuclear reactor panel and a music tech’s soundboard. I felt my breathing get shallow and I fought to get it under control. Just let it pass through you, let it happen, then get on with business.

“It’s almost like learning to fly in a two day period and attempting to fly a transcontinental flight across the ocean is setting your expectations too high.” I muttered sarcastically to myself. “Fuck you too, Light…”

I spent a solid hour staring at the instrument control panel and hunting for a user manual of some kind. Unfortunately, the makers of this particular plane, or indeed the pilots that crewed it, had decided in their infinite wisdom that a complete and utter novice wouldn’t dare dream in their life to attempt to fly such a complicated piece of machinery. I vaguely mumbled about how considerate they were. CLEARLY they were never counting on a tiny lizard to ever try piloting it. The idiots.

Okay. Nothing ventured, nothing gained… I gently pushed the throttle upward, into what I hoped was taxiing speed. If I could work out the simple stuff, it’d at least make me feel better. Maybe if I got that right, the rest would all fall into place, right? I mean, either that or I’d die. Either outcome was golden at this juncture.

The engines made an incredibly strange high pitched whining sound. I instantly pulled the throttle back and stared at the new buttons that had lit up. I made a second attempt, flicking a small switch close to the throttle. It turns out that was the ignition or something, because the engines whirred into life and the plane began trundling out of the hangar, the still open stair door scraping across the ground and shrieking in my non-existent ears.

“Oh shit, wait. Shitshitshitshit…”

The throttle wouldn’t move back. There was no button to move the stairs that I could see.

“Shitshitshitshit” 

Would losing the stairs affect the aerodynamics of the plane?! There’d be a great big gaping hole in the side of it, of course it would! I’d just crash like I was going to do already!

I craned my head over the console, trying to gauge the size of the hangar’s entrance. If I aimed for the middle of the doorway, I should be alright. If I had more distance, I could iron it out properly.

Thankfully, I was somehow able to trundle the plane out of the hangar proper and onto the staging area before the runway. The scraping was getting louder outside, gaining a new resonance on the concrete and tarmac mix. There was the occasional clang, followed by a huge judder afterwards.

“The runway markers, or the lights, or whatever. Oh god, I’m running them over…”
It was at this point the stairs gave up the ghost. Perhaps they got stuck to a pretty solid marker, but shortly afterwards and with a lot of noise, they ripped away from the plane.

Whereupon they collided with the left engine.

The grinding of the engine was joined by a backup chorus of electronic sirens and flashing red lights. I jumped up in the seat in desperation, flicking any and every switch I could see. I grappled with the throttle, it must have a release switch! An off button! WHATEVER!
My hand went through the instrument panel.

My heart turned to ice as I freed it from the panel. Staring once again at the sharp claws that tipped my fingers. I broke my gaze from my taloned hand and cast a glance out of the window. The single working engine was causing the plane to spiral lazily onto the runway. Eventually, it’d probably collide with the main terminal building, but at this rate it’d take a solid hour or so.

I threw my hands up in the air.

“FUCK IT! NO, NO. YAKNOW. IT’S NOT LIKE I WANTED TO FLY ANYWAY.”

I stepped out into the main body of the plane, taking note of the lone service trolley at the far back of the plane jostling awkwardly, spilling it’s stackable plastic cups and it’s foil pouches of airline pretzels.

“NO, IT’S FINE. I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT I WAS HOPING TO ACHIEVE HERE.”

I stood in the doorway. The ground looked quite far away without the stairs.  I fought with the centrifugal force of the plane and braced myself inside the door frame, noting idly where the door hinges were. Judging by how they had shaken themselves loose and twisted into a pair of mangled, sheared chunks of aluminum, they were clearly not meant to take the kind of strain they were put under.

“HEY WHITE IT’S PERFECTLY SIMPLE, JUST GET A PLANE.”

I leapt out, landed hard on the tarmac and rolled for a solid few seconds. I picked myself up and started sprinting as far from the plane as I possibly could. The last thing I wanted to do was to be hit by a tire or get sucked into the jet wash. I’d seen it happen in a movie once and decided that I didn’t want to end up bursting like a blood sausage.

“THEN ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LEARN HOW TO FLY, SIMPLE RIGHT?!”

I turned around to bare witness to the stupidity. The small business jet drifted across the runway like it was some sort of solo ballerina act. I groaned and pinched my eyes. How did we think this was a good idea? Well, we really didn’t, to be honest. Or at least, I didn’t. Light was a smart guy, but I just KNEW that he just expected it to all end up okay for me.

The plane casually upended a baggage cart that was left parked off to one side. The planes chassis was already scratched and dented all to hell and the damaged jet belched smoke up into the sky.

I don’t lead his idiotic charmed life.

On the bright side, if anyone else was alive, this place would be lit up like a beacon. Anyone that could see the smoke would come running and then they’d meet me and I’d finally not be alone anymore.

Yes. They will obviously want to associate with the idiot that just trashed a FUCKING PLANE THINKING THEY COULD FLY IT.

“I can’t be associated with this travesty.”

I kicked the tarmac and huffed. I had to leave before anyone came to investigate.
By the time I piled into the car and trundled off, the plane was a few hundred meters from the terminal building. I headbutted the steering wheel, electing a short, sharp beep from the vehicle. Well, great. Where the hell would I go now?! What was the plan?

“Fuck you, Light.”