Chapter 41: 41. Nothing Makes Sense Anymore

She turned her head unnaturally in my direction, it sort of jarred as it moved, like stop motion and stopped as the helmet was pointed at me. 

Wrex: "Alex?"

Her stance changed as she then made her way toward me, from an overly confident stride to an animalistic, ready-to-attack pose, crouching ever so slightly and spreading her clawed hands at angles to her sides as she stepped ever closer.

Wrex: "Alex! I know you're in there! Snap out of it! Take control again, you can do it!" I tried to reason, as I started to back up away from her.

All of a sudden, her left arm plasma jet fired, throwing her off balance, followed by her right arm, then all four jets and she took off into the sky.

'Was that Alex trying to take her away from me?' I wasn't sure, but I had to know where she was heading, so I took off in pursuit. I followed her for a short while before a call came through from an unknown number on my HUD so I answered. Suddenly and coincidentally timed, Alex... or rather, Reikon, slowed down to a casual 400 mph, so I dropped my own speed down to keep a safe distance.

"Admiral Wrex, I am General Benjamin Monroe, you may remember me from our meeting a few nights ago upon your introduction by Major Tom Stamford."

Wrex: "Err... greetings General, I can't exactly recall you, but I did meet a lot of new faces that day so I may well have done. Could I call you back a bit later maybe? I'm in a bit of a situation right now."

Monroe: "That's funny, because in the last few minutes I have received a report of a 'situation', involving two individuals with the exact same descriptions as yourself and the fugitive know as Alex, putting a large hole in the Folkestone side of the Eurotunnel station, before ending up having a fire fight and putting a large number of civilian lives in danger! Confirm or deny!"

Wrex: "Err... maybe."

Monroe: "Clarify what 'Maybe' means!"

Wrex: "Sorry General, I don't have to answer to you. I'm on the case now"

Monroe: "When we had that meeting it was agreed by all parties present, that for the time being, your existence would be kept under the radar. This is the exact opposite of that!"

Wrex: "I completely understand that sir, this incident was out of my hands which is why I am in pursuit of Alex right now."

Monroe: "We know, we are tracking you both right now via satellite and are coordinating with Her Majesty's Royal Air Force and we have a squadron of Eurofighter Typhoons on an intercept course with you as we speak."

Wrex: "Whoa what?! General, Alex, is not herself right now, she is extremely vulnerable!"

General: "Then I suggest you hand yourselves in right now."

Wrex: "Not going to be a simple as that General."

General: "If that is your choice then so be it." Then the line wen dead.

Wrex: "Fuck!..." I tried to open a channel to Alex... or Reikon... who ever was in control right now, "...Alex?, Alex come in. Alex if you can hear me we're in trouble, we need to get groundside now!..." I watched Alex/Reikon's movements up ahead, there was no change in direction, no indication that my message was received. "... Alex... Fine... REIKON, I know you can hear me, You need to stop this! You need to hand yourself over to me and the Vanguard and we can negotiate..." ...Still no response... "...Reikon, the British are sending attack fighters to bring us in, we can-"

Reikon: "I know. Eurofighter Typhoons GR4, P3EA variants, six of them to be precise, closing in on our six o'clock fast. Nine seconds to intercept."

Wrex: "Reikon, I know you, I know you well enough to know what you can do, stand down, please, you don't need to do this." I was met by silence again until the RAF communications came in as they arrived along side us.

RAF: "Unidentified aircrafts, I have the authority of Her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom to warn you that if you do not comply with my orders you will be shot down. I am ordering you to accompany us to RAF Coningsby air base. Please acknowledge and adjust heading by 72 degrees North West of your current heading."

I noted the that one of the pilots gestured to me to follow and pointed down and I quickly looked ahead to Reikon, she was increasing speed, but not by much, keeping it just under Mach one. I gained speed as well to keep up, then called the General again. I spoke as soon as the line connected, not giving him a chance to speak,

Wrex: "General, you need to call the planes off now, my target, Alex, is possessed by a powerful outside force, she will not hesitate to kill these pilots!"

General: "While you and your target are over British air space you are required to follow proceedure. Non compliance will result in direct action to be taken."

Wrex: "These men will be killed! They won't stand a chance!" The line ended without any more being said.

Wrex: "Fuck!"

RAF: "Unidentified aircraft, if you do not comply we will use lethal force, this is your final warning."

Wrex: "This is Admiral Wrex of the Draconian Vanguard, I am willing to comply with your request and am not a threat to you. However the target on my 12 O'clock is extremely dangerous and violent, do not engage, I repeat, do NOT ENGAGE!, fall back!" But before any more was said, Reikon spun in the air, extended a blade on her right arm and violently dropped speed into the path of one of the Typhoons, slicing completely down the hull, causing it to instantly explode, the jet bursting into flames as pieces rained from the sky. She spun around and pursued after another fighter, which all had broken formation after their squad mate had been blown from the sky.

RAF: "ECHO FIVE THREE IS DOWN FROM HOSTILE ATTACK! WE ARE ENGAGING!"

Wrex: "Fuck fuck fuck!..." My HUD locked on to keep track of her, "...Reikon! Stop this now! No more blood shed!"

RAF: "Target locked!..."

Next thing I knew she was firing rounds of plasma, at me! I barrel rolled to avoid the shots, narrowly missing a Typhoon shooting past me, one of it's MBDA Meteor missiles disengaged from it's mount on the wing and shot forwards under it's own thrust and rocketed towards Reikon.

RAF: "...Missile away!"

Reikon with ease shot this one out of the sky, causing me to fly through the fireball created by it's destruction, shaking the frame of my armour while shrapnel pinged off of it. Two more Typhoons out of nowhere from a lower altitude, firing their Mauser BK 27 cannons at her, the rounds hitting her armour with sparks as she was caught off guard as the planes crossed her path from below. Two more Meteor missiles were launched. She seemingly danced in the air, using her powers, I saw her spin and turn the missiles about face in our direction, one thankfully narrowly missed one of the fighters after he rolled out of harms way. The other however was on a direct course with another of the fighters, I locked on and fired a round of plasma at the missle, detonating it mere meters in front of the Typhoon. It saved the plane, well... mostly... it had got hit by too much shrapnel and one of the engine was now smoking badly and loosing speed and altitude.

RAF: "I'M HIT, LOST ENGINE TWO, HYDRAULICS ARE OUT!"

RAF: "Eject, eject, eject!"

Sure enough the canopy exploded off and the pilot jettisoned out, his parachute deploying once he was well and truly clear of the carnage and the plane plummeted in a spiral.

RAF: "Echo four niner is down, pilot has a good chute. Reengaging the bogey!"

Wrex: "Right that does it Reikon!" I targeted the plasma jets on her legs and fired, the rounds chased after her, she dived out of the way and the rounds sailed passed her.

Reikon: "You'll have to be quicker than that if you want to- OOF!" *BOOM!*

Out of no where another Meteor missile had been launched, apparently Reikon was completely unaware of it closing in and it made contact, engulfing her in a ball of flames.

Wrex: "NOO!"

RAF: "Direct hit! Target down!"

Ahead of the fire ball, spinning wildly out of control and falling from the sky was Alex's body, intact, from what I could see, but she must be either dead or unconscious, I booted it in the hope to catch her, not that I needed to... her plasma jets fired off pattern, intermittent of each other, trying to regain control from her spin, which in seconds she did and regained some altitude.

RAF: "Wait a second, bogey still active, reengaging!"

Wrex: "Enough now Reikon! I don't want that body killed!"

Alex: "Wrex it's me! Reikon's unconscious! I'm in control again, call them off! Please!"

Wrex: "Alex?! They're not going to listen to me! You need to Jump out of here!"

Alex: "I can't... I don't think I can make one at these speeds, I'm scared Wrex!"

Wrex: "Admiral Wrex to all RAF planes, target is no longer possessed, disengage! I repeat, target is no longer a threat!"

RAF: "That thing just took out one of our men along with two planes! It's a threat!"

Alex: "I'm sorry Wrex..." All of a sudden she spread her wings, effectively making a full on emergency stop in mid air and she ripped past me, missing me by a mere few feet. The planes all banked to turn around and Alex blasted away in the opposite direction with me hot on her tail. The visible vapor cone blasted off of Alex and I heard the sound of a sonic boom seconds after. I kicked it up as fast as the armour could go, going super sonic myself. The speed indicated on my HUD quickly maxed out at Mach 3.6... but it still wasn't enough, Alex was still tearing away from me and it was seconds before I completely lost sight of her. 

__________*_Alex_*__________

Barcelona, Spain, Wed 19 Jan 22 18:12

My jets sputtered as I came in to land on the driveway, my concentration due to the pain was in was not helping me control myself and therefore my armour very well, not to mention the damage I had received. I collapsed as I landed, my legs feeling weak and giving away, but I pulled myself up anyway and staggered inside the garage door I just opened.

Raina: "Jesus Christ, is that your version of destressing?!" She said running away from Sarah's tank to my side.

*"That was just a warm up for me... Sloppy though."*

*Me: "Oh fuck off will you."*

Me: "Yeah... I just need to sit down for a minute…" I groaned back to Raina.

She positioned herself under my left arm to support me and help me through the garage and helped me to sit in the chair in front of the tank.

Raina: "AND IS THAT A KNIFE IN YOUR BACK?!"

Me: "Oh yeah..." I replied retracting my helmet back, looking under my right arm at my back. It was a lucky strike, landing between armour plates and had punctured through the softer flexible gel layer that covered my body.

Rain: "Jesus... wait there, don't move!" She rushed out the room. I retracted the armour back from around my belly, but it caught on the dagger as it pulled around my back so I stopped it doing any more,

Alex: "ARGH!... grrr!, fuck..." I grabbed the handle, breathed in heavy three times before holding my breath and yanked hard.

I screamed out as I yanked the blade out in one fell swoop and dropped it on the floor, blood now pouring out of the wound. I quickly hovered my hand over the gash and concentrated the Shard's energy to heal me, my hand glowed red and purple, so too did the wound. The blood stopped flowing and very slowly the incision started closing up. I hissed in pain, it still wasn't a nice process. Raina then rushed back into the garage with a bag and crouched down behind me on my right side.

Raina: "Oh... Guess I'm not needed then. How are you doing that?"

Me: "...Gah… the same powers I'm using on Sarah... argh... They let me do many things, turns out I can heal myself too... to an extent anyway."

Raina: "So do you need my medical expertise for anything?"

Me: "I think I'm good thanks... Dragons can heal a lot faster than Humans, I think that's a trait that carried over when I turned into this hybrid, I just need some time that's all." She gave a slow accepting nod while watching intrigued at the process.

Raina: "What the hell happened to you anyway? You look like you've been thrown through a grinder, you're paintwork is all scratched and burnt... Why do you smell like burning? and are those bullet holes?!"

Me: "Yeah... I made some friends in the Royal Air Force..."

I was starting to feel horrible... When Reikon tortured Jack, I was out of it mostly, I could see what she saw, but more like a faded memory that I was just rewatching. He deserved what happened to him. But this time... this was seeing everything through my own eyes, hearing everything Reikon was hearing in real time... Wrex talking to the General, then the RAF's warnings, Wrex asking Reikon to stop over and over... being unable to control myself, like I was a puppet... I murdered one of those pilots... and I couldn't stop myself! That pilot won't be coming home to his family tonight because of me! I suddenly felt very nauseous... Was it guilt?

The pain probably wasn't helping... nope, I couldn't hold it back... I had healed the wound enough to move. I leapt up and headed out the garage, staggering through the downstairs corridor to the downstairs bathroom, threw the lid of the toilet up just in time and chucked... I won't go into the details of that... we all know what it's like to throw up... annoyingly it was just mostly bile, that's the problem when you don't need to eat or drink, there's nothing to bring back. After calming down for some time, being sat semi lying down by the bowl, propping the upper half of my body up with my left arm and wing, I pulled myself up off the floor, cleaned myself up, flushed the loo and left the bathroom.

Raina: "Are you ok?" She asked as I reentered the garage.

Me: "No... no I'm not ok, I'm losing my mind, literally, being taken over by a monster from over a thousand years ago and I can't control it!..."

*"Monster?!"* she screeched, sounding almost shocked in my head,

Me: "Just, SHUT UP!" I yelled up to the ceiling before grabbing my head and groaning.

Raina: "Alex-"

Me: "WHAT?!… I'm so sorry... Raina... I didn't mean to snap... Look, these powers, the abilities I've received, they've come with a conscious that is slowly trying to take control of me, and it's winning. I need to find a way to get her out of me before a load of things go wrong ok? But I need to save Sarah first, do you understand?"

Raina: "I understand... just trying to understand the science behind it."

Me: "There is no science to it, ancient magic is overwhelming science and that's all that is possible to be understood right now. I don't really want to keep talking about it please... How's Sarah doing?"

Raina: "Er, vitals are all still good, no sign of rejection at the moment and I believe her radiation levels are dropping to safe levels."

You are reading story Alex – Heart Of The Vanguard at novel35.com

Me: "Good good..." I looked down at my badly burnt and damaged armour, I could see it slowly repairing itself, dent's slowly pushing back out, torn metal slowly pulling itself back together, even the paintwork was slowly reforming back to it's gloss black and red finish in the lesser damaged areas... "...I need some rest... I'll leave things in your hands ok?"

Raina: "Of course, good night Alex. Might I recommend avoiding any future destressing sessions?"

Me: "Ha ha ha..." I mock laughed, "...Very funny... good night." I hobbled off out of the garage and up the stairs to the room I had claimed as my own, locked the door and retracted all of my remaining armour. Some of it made some unhealthy sounding scraping sounds rather than the slick and crisp metallic noises it usually makes as it retracted.

'Hopefully it will have repaired itself by the time I need it again, or rather, I would have repaired myself? Does that count? Oh... Whatever...' I hobbled over to the full length mirror on the wardrobe door and checked myself over. My armour had done an amazing job at protecting my hijacked body, considering I crashed at terminal velocity into a reinforced concrete floor and I was hit by a bloody missile. You could clearly see I had taken the hit to my left hip, probably why I was hobbling too, but there was already heavy bruising, showing more on my pale Human skin that spread over my lower body and left leg a fair way. There was the odd bruise in other places, but other than that I was relatively unscathed, besides of course my recently healed stab wound that was still very tender. I had had enough for today, I headed straight for ther bed and collapsed on it, falling into a deep sleep straight away.

__________*_Skylen_*__________

Secret location, Wed 19 Jan 22 17 18:02 GMT

To say I was still a bit miffed at the events that occurred in Iceland was an understatement. Had Sky High Technologies actually listened to me and obliged my request of supplying me with a set of Jarvie Tech based armour, that would have leveled the field, things might have turned very differently. For starters, Wrex, my so called 'brother', would be dead, along with the Princess and Alex. The Shard would also still be in my possession, that overly powered entity would never have been created and Sky High Technologies would be creating more followers for me by the many hundreds if not thousands by now, not the measly dozens or low hundreds that they have been.

Still, even with some Jarvie tech derived armour, I doubt it would have stood a chance against that entity... The way she obliterated B51 and C09 without even trying... The Gods only know what fate that D09 endured, but I wasn't going stick around and wait to find out what happened to her and then me. I paced the catwalks of this facility which stretched over one of the many habitat areas... totally unnecessary in my opinion, but apparently these Humans need times and spaces to 'relax' and 'gather thoughts'... what a load of crap... Draconians don't need such a thing... well, they shouldn't... But then the Royal family and the council use to like to dither, they probably would have understood. I tried to clear my mind, no sense in getting myself irate about the royals again right now.

This facility though, was not the normal one that I resided in, the normal one being the indoctrination and training labs so that I could provide my input. No, this one was focused more on technical advancements and striving for improved techniques to produce a higher yield of indoctrinated numbers... Even without the Shard, they were making progress, albeit slow, but output has increased by about 350 percent since Delta batch! Last report I had received is that the final few subjects were being recruited for indoctrination into Kilo batch, the largest batch yet, some 500 subjects will be entered. Granted, not all of them will make it, they never all do, but that's not an issue to us. Procedures were scheduled to start at the end of this week.

I carried on to the end of the catwalk where it entered the dormitory area, followed the corridor to where I had my own room set out for me. I used the palm scanner on the door and it slid open for me. The lights turned on automatically as I stepped inside, pressed the button on the frame to close and lock the door again. I sighed as I pulled my canon and it's holster over my wing, shoulder and head, then... something whispered... "...Skylen..." I ripped the cannon from the holster and fired at the entity now sat on a chair in the corner of the room, the same one from Iceland! The round blew the chair apart and obliterated the shelves behind it and anything on them that was in that corner... Yet the entity remained in the same position, seemingly sitting on thin air, one leg crossed over the other very casually.

Skylen: "Who are you? Why are you here?" I asked cautiously, waiting for imminent attack.

Reikon: "I guess you could say, 'I'm right where you need me to be'."

I dropped the cannon along with my jaw,

Skylen: "Reikon?! No, this isn't real..."

A chime was heard on the loud speakers in the room, there was a slight crackle on the coms before a man's voice came through,

"Skylen, *ah-hem* sir, facility security here. We registered your entry to your quarters, but shortly after we detected a large heat spike. Is everything alright or do you require fire teams?"

I stepped back over to door, pressing the button on the coms unit on the door frame to respond,

Skylen: "No, everything..." I looked back over to the odd entity, which was claiming that she was Reikon, still hovering in the corner as if she was still sat on the chair, watching me through the black and red armour. I hadn't realised had been staring that long that I forgot to finish my answer, "...everything's just fine." I replied slowly, releasing the button.

"Er, roger that."

Skylen: "Is it really you? Noo... it can't be, my love is dead... I must be dreaming..."

Reikon: "Is this a dream? No. Is this real? Yes. Am I really here? No... unfortunately."

Skylen: "I don't understand..."

She stood up elegantly from her sitting position.

Reikon: "My love... I found you, after days of searching, every brainwave of every person on this horribly over run planet, and I finally found you. I am not really here, just an image of my conscious projected to be here in front of you."

Skylen: "But how? You... you were dead! I carried your body from that burning house!" Her helmet snapped open, and then receded back, folding and overlapping down to her head and into her collar line. That face! Not quite the same, but close enough, it was her!... Well, the banished Human version of her, but it was my love from oh so long ago.

Reikon: "My body died... I did not. It's taken what feels like an eternity to work it out, but at the moment of my death the Shard absorbed my soul, preserving it. I have no idea as to why it happened, I just know it did. But these bumbling Humans have a tendency to play with things they know nothing about, in particular the parents of a one, Sarah Jarvie, I know you've met her. They pulled me from the Shard, limited me to the functions of an embarrassing 'artificial intelligence'. But this one..." she gesture down at her self, "...Alexander Crawford, the failed Human indoctrinate, McGriffin syndrome sufferer, with an acute nervous system disorder, I was bonded with her mind, ordered to help her, keep her living. But you, you killed her, then the dimwitted Human herself, Sarah Jarvie, tried to revive her by repowering her armour with the Shard. The direct connection between the Shard, the Armour and Alex released me fully into Alex's mind... How's that for a little summary?"

Skylen: "So why aren't you here and now for real?"

Reikon: "Because I can't physically find you. Where ever you are you are well hidden I will give you that. And because although my mind is free, I am not able to fully overcome this... Alex... I hate to admit that she is actually remarkably strong willed. But anger and depression seems to be her weak point, it makes her vulnerable, it's only a matter of time before she succumbs completely, as each day passes, I get stronger. But when she does finally fall to my will, I will be ready to join you. From what I have seen though you have been busy, not that I'm too surprised with the amount of time you've had."

Skylen: "Even in your absence I have been preparing... these Humans are power hungry and that makes them gullible, they think I am helping them but in truth, they are helping me. Even though I had accepted your death, I wasn't going to abandon your will."

Reikon: "That's good to hear. How many units do we have so far?"

Skylen: "A little over 3,100, with a potential for another 500 more in the next month... it's a slow process-"

Reikon: "We need more... But it's a start... as soon as I am able to, I will join you, boost those numbers... how many countries are you operating in so far? The indoctrination process that is."

Skylen: "Three, so far."

Reikon: "Not good enough. Push for more facilities to begin production in other countries... and... I know Sky High Technologies have begun prototyping exoskeletons, I remember from Iceland, but you need to get them armoured, I want every fighting chance at taking out the Vanguard in one fell swoop and as quick as possible, because our enemies are already onto us..." She looked off to one side, deep in thought almost before looking back to me, "...I must leave now, my love, Alex is stirring, becoming more conscious from her rest, I don't want her seeing this discussion. Farewell, make me proud, I love you."

Skylen: "I love you too, my Queen." I replied as her image ghosted out of existence and I was left alone in a half destroyed room, with the odd piece of shelving still showing some glowing embers.

__________*_Alex_*__________

Barcelona, Spain, Thurs 20 Jan 22 08:00

The alarm went off in my head, coupled with Reikons incoherent whispering sounding louder than usual. I pushed back the whispering so that it was just a faint tone, pulled myself up with a groan, feeling quite stiff, I felt like I had slept quite well for a change compared to the last few days but I also felt a bit... I don't know... Rough? I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down... waking up and seeing a pair of perky tits jutting out from my chest was something I still really hadn't got used to...

'Oh sure waking up a female Dragon or a Hybrid with scally skin in places, claws, tail and wings, no problem!, completely natural!... tits on the other hand? So abnormal... you're so fucking strange Alex.' I mused to myself.

I looked down and my injuries next, the bruising was already at the yellowing stage, the knife wound was now already a scar that looked about three months after the initial injury, probably only thanks due to the Shard. I struggled to pull myself up and wondered whether to armour up, to support myself or whether to wear some casual get up, as per my blending is disguise maybe, just to emphasise the point to myself that I wasn't going to do anything drastic today. I decided on the latter, see how I got on, so I 'willed' my causal disguise on, a quick blanket if red and purple mist swept over me, revealing the red converse, tight dark denim jeans, black top and black hoodie. I just didn't bother hiding my Draconian features though.

Me: "Oww..." I changed the jeans from a tight fit to a loose fit with an elasticated waistband so they were more baggy and not pressing hard on my bruised hip. That didn't help my 'off' feeling... I felt my stomach churning, the acidic feeling rising... I ran for the bathroom, slid to the floor in front of the loo, threw the lid up and dry heaved, the results of which after several goes was just bile again. After calming down and slumping slightly by the loo for a bit I finally cleanned myself up and got up.

Me: "Gah... What is wrong with me?" I asked myself rhetorically as I flushed the toilet.

I made my way downstairs, stopping as I past the living room as I heard the tv on, seeing Raina in there.

Raina: "Hey, you're famous..." she said and put the volume up on the tv showing a news channel.

News anchor: "...as we say we have had no official confirmation that these are the same subjects in these clips, but you can't deny that they look remarkably similar, if not the same..." The footage changed to someone's mobile phone camera footage that had been sent in, with the headline underneath stating 'Footage from Folkestone, UK'. You could see Wrex land near me as I was pulling myself from the crater, and you could clearly hear Wrex say: "Alex!, Are you ok?!" then followed by our little discussion, which you could barely make out as who ever was holding the phone had backed away some by that point, then the start of our brawl with the Executioners, which once it really got going the camera guy was running a mile. Then at the side of the footage on the screen were some still shots taken from some CCTV footage of me in the hospital.

Anchorman: "Now we are hearing that this same 'Alex' may have been involved in the events of London nine days ago which left some of city without power after what was said to be a Nuclear device exploding on the outskirts of our atmosphere and causing EMP damage to the city's power grids and more sensitive equipment. This next footage you may remember was the only footage caught on this incident." the next shot was of London, dated on the 11th of January, the same footage that Kayley had shown me of the news crew in London, I watched again as I carried the plasma core up into the clouds.

Anchorman: "Now this 'Alex' and her companion, some are referring to as 'super heroes', in a world where we already have so much fiction on that subject, is this as close to that term that  we can get in the real world? We asked some of you for your opinions. Alan Peters from Pittsburg saying 'Clearly they are mutated lizard people, probably escaped from some illegal government experiment.' Jane Emoss from Dallas says 'These are aliens, pure and simple people.' and one more from Christine Lillian from Atlanta says 'These are creatures are clearly the work of the devil.' So where some might think of them as heroes, the flip side of this is that these two are also being targeted by the RAF, that's the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom, for illegally invading British air space and not cooperating with requests. The UK's government is labelling them as terrorists, for their actions of attacking a number of the RAF's Eurofighter Typhoons, destroying two fighters in aerial combat and killing one pilot by the name of-"

Me: "Turn it off!" I shouted.

Raina's head snapped to me,

Raina: "You did what?!"

Me/Reikon: "I said TURN IT OFF!"

I had armoured up without even realising and fired a round of plasma at the TV blowing a hole through it and the wall behind that it was mounted to into the next room. I stood there, heavily breathing, arm still outstretched and heat waves pouring off the exhaust port on the gauntlet, my arm dropped as I realised my outburst and looked down at Raina, cowering behind a seat cushion on the sofa. I retracted back my armour, replacing it with my casual clothing set up once more and crouched down beside the arm of the sofa as she looked over the cushion uneasily at me, slighty trying to edge away.

Me: "Raina... I'm so sorry... Please understand... I didn't kill that pillot... well, it kinda was me, it was the conscience I told you about, I didn't want to kill that man, I would never... Look I'm not trying to justify myself but yes, that was me in London, I pulled that plasma core... erm... yeah, for simplicity's sake, a nuclear bomb from the city center. I tried to save the city because I knew there were people still in it... it almost killed me doing it, in fact it lead towards my death and rebirth as this... what I'm trying to say is, I can't kill someone, I can't allow people to die unnecessarily. Reikon... The conscience... was controlling me at the time and she killed that pilot, but it was my body, my lack of strength to over power her that lead to his death, that much is on me."

She stepped up from the sofa, gave me a wide birth as she went to leave the room, speaking to me as she left,

Raina: "For the record, I have a cousin in the RAF..." and she stormed out of the room.

I buried my head in my scaly hands on the arm of the sofa as I knelt on the floor,

Me: "Ohh shit..."

After a few moments I got up and headed woefully to the garage, sat in the chair in front of Sarah's tank and partially raised my hand and it gave a slight glow of red and purple, to carry on my therapy of coaxing Sarah's body not to go into rejection with a sigh.

In the back of my mind in my boredom I continued my attempts trying to hack the Level 3 databases of SkyTech, then something else occurred to me... If the news channels were starting to report on me, by name, then maybe they were on the look out for anything Draconian...

'I could make this work for me!' So I set up a new search to run constantly in the background to scour the world's news for anything new on anything to do with the Draconians, whether that be sightings of SkyTech Dragons, SkyTech buildings, corruption allegations, conspiracies, revelations of new information coming to light... Anything that didn't have anything to do with me basically. But with me being the focus of the media right now, it might be a few days before I find anything.

__________

10:07

Raina slowly walked into the garage, but I didn't directly look at her. She merely walked up to the computer on the side of Sarah's tank and scrolled through the screens. After a few minutes I couldn't take the silence anymore,

Me: "I really am Sorry Raina... You have no idea, how hard this is for me to control."

She sighed finished what she was doing on the computer and left the garage, causing me to feel slightly frustrated and depressed, until surprisingly she walked in with another chair and placed it next to me and sat down on it.

Raina: "I can't pretend I know what you're going through so I won't even try. But I'll tell you something, you've got this whole lone wolf, gunslinger type act going on. But, just because you have some personal problems, doesn't mean you  have to face them alone you know, you have family, you have friends at least don't you?"

Me: "I do but... They can't rely on me right now."

Raina: "Maybe they can't rely on you right now, But you can rely on them... That's the idea of friends and family. And I bet, if one of them was in trouble..." She gestured towards the tank, "...You'd go out of your way to help them, right?"

Me: "Yeah I suppose... But you've seen me now... I'm dangerous... volatile even-"

Raina: "Doesn't matter. You know I became a nurse because I love helping people, I stuck it out, even during all that Covid 19 crap that started over two years ago, despite the dangers, I carried on helping. Which if I can do that for random people, then think how much further your friends will go for you."

The glow around my hand faded as I lowered it and I turned to Raina,

Me: "Thank you Raina."

Raina smiled at my reply, gave me a rub on the shoulder and she looked back at Sarah in the tank, floating in the green liquid.

Rain: "She looks… I don't know what it is... I want to say bigger?"

I Looked up to Sarah myself, recalled a memory of her in the tank on the first day and compared that with how she looked now,

Me: "I calculate that her body had gained in mass by 4.8 percent, she has lost some hair, most of her limbs and extremities have elongate by at least 2 percent and..." I changed my vision to look deeper under her skin, analysing bone structure among other things, "...I can see that her tail bone is growing, her wing joints are forming by her shoulder blades and her organs are repositioning and resizing..." I turned to look back at Raina, who was giving me a look that I wasn't sure if it was disgusted, horrified or confused... or all of the above, "...What?? Did I say something wrong?"

Raina: "You can tell all that just by looking at her?!"

Me: "Another one of my abilities. I can see through people to their core if I wanted to." I said with a shrug of my shoulders.

Raina: "Is there anything you can't do??"

My head dropped along with the slight smile I had on,

Me: "Apparently I have the power to take life... but not the ability to give it." I said glumly looking at the floor. Raina rubbed my shoulder again but then pulled me into her shoulder for a half hug.

Raina: "Maybe... but then again that's not quite true is it?..." She gestured to Sarah's tank, "...if it wasn't for you, your friend here would be dead by now I suspect, so in some respects, you do actually have the power to give life."

I looked back up to the tank and smiled a bit again, realising that Raina actually had a point.

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