Chapter 2

I was standing in a corridor. The floor was felt green carpeting and the walls were narrow and tall. It was an old house, like. Super old. Musty too. I sniffed at the air as I walked forward, looking around curiously. Hey! I was also not in my human form! I was in my dragon form – a small, cat-shaped, cat-sized, black scaled dragony ball of cuteness that bore zero resemblance to a cat. Well, not really a ball. But Dad always called me a ball of adorable, so some kind of ball-ness was involved. Like Jean-Luc Picard in a ball pit!

I came to a flight of stairs and decided to try and slide down the banister. I hopped on and skidded down on my belly, squeaking with excitement. Then I flew off the banister and landed on the floor of a room that what is near the front door in a fancy house and leads to all the other rooms but isn’t anything else. Like, in Auntie Lisa’s house, there’s just the front door and boom, you’re in the living room. But in this house, there was a front door, then a room that did nothing, then the doors to other rooms.

I’m pretty sure it had a name.

I looked around curiously.

“Brash?” A very posh sounding voice asked. Male, kinda mean sounding. Like he thought everyone else was dumb, like that shouty internet guy. You know, the one with the yellow.

I turned around and saw a pair of very shiny shoes.

My eyes widened and I looked up fancy pants, to the glittering belt buckle to-

“Brash!” The voice was female now.

I blinked and suddenly, I was laying on my back. The gorgeous dwarven princess was looking down at me, looking deeply concerned. In the distance, I could hear the quiet burbling sound of molten metal.

“I’m okay!” I said.

“Are you sure?” the Princess’ brow furrowed. “You just shouted about a tapir’s penis, then fainted.”

I did that cool kung-fu thing where you leap from laying on your back to standing on your feet. I did this by using dragon flight magic to give myself a shove upright. It’s not cheating when dragons do it! I grinned at the Princess, trying to be suave and sexy and cool. Instead, a pink fist made of pure ass kicking awesomeness grabbed onto the collar of my T-shirt and yanked me up and off my feet. P90-B8 stepped between me and the Princess, glaring at me.

“What’s a tapir?” she growled.

“It’s kind of like a pig!” I yelped. “Except for all the different parts!”

P90 started to shake me and the Princess shouted at her to stop, and G282 came up and started to exclaim things about ‘probabilities’ and ‘action and effect entanglement!’ and that was when the police cars flew in, skidded across the cratered and smoking AstroTurf, and out came the Fuzz. Human police, according to Dad, had once been trigger happy psychopaths who couldn’t walk down the street without shooting a black person five times in the back. But Dad was also a bit of an exaggeration type Pokemon, unlike myself. I never exaggerated anything! But modern human police, as far as I could tell, were much better about shooting people! Since they had sleep wands.

Though humans were weird and put their wands into handles like their guns, which took away most if not all of the fun of having a wand, which was the swish and flick. Though, technically, P90’s fireball wand had been pistolized too. So, maybe P90 would get along with these police, and we could wrap this up diplomatically!

“Nox!” the cops shouted in unison, and sleep spells roared outwards, slamming to the ground, then exploded outwards. The darts of magical energy released by those impacts flew into the foreheads of moi, the two golems, and the Princess. The Princess sprawled on the ground, snoring loudly. The golems and the cutest dragon in the universe (me, in case you forgot) remained standing.

“Hands up!” one of the cops said. “On your knees, now!”

“Hey, wait!” I said, stepping forward.

The cops flicked the switches on their pistol wands. The sleep wands rotated into the pistol shooty bit and the magic missile wands that they were also loaded with came to bear. They all glowed with a pale purple light and the cops looked pretty ready to riddle me with mildly annoying blasts of magical energy. Well ... I narrowed my eyes. Magic missiles never missed. And depending on how good the wizard who made the wands was, they could fire anywhere between one pin-prick to enough to actually give me pause.

I put my hands behind my head. “You guys do know I’m Brash the Dragon, right?”

The cops glanced at one another.

“On your knees, sir,” one said.

I sighed and got on my knees. Behind me, P90 and G282 were both standing protectively before the unconscious princess. I glanced back over my shoulder, hissing softly.

“Psst! Get on your knees!”

“Who are these people?” G282 asked.

“I can take em,” P90 muttered.

“That’s irrelevant, P90-B8.” G282 said. “If they’re local law enforcement...”

“Dudes!” I hissed. “Get on your knees right now. Then we’ll get arrested, and that will make them all relax, and then we can get un-arrested. Arguing with them right now just makes coppers wanna wig out!”

P90 grumbled and knelt down. G282 followed.

The coppers swept us up in the vans. I shifted to make sure I had a fancy gangster hat! A fedora!

Just like in my dream.

The old black cop who was sitting behind the desk leading to the jail cells looked at me.

“Mr. Miles,” he said. “You need to give over your weapons – no weapons in a jail cell.”

I grinned. “How can I give up ... dese guns!?” I lifted my arms, flexing my muscles.

The old black cop sighed. He looked like he was too old for my awesome jokes. “Mr. Miles, according to scanner, you have...” he turned to the computer screen. The keyboard attached to the keyboard was my favorite kind – the kind with big huge clacky clicky keys. He punched two of the buttons. Click klack. He started to read. “Two plasma beamcasters, an array of anti-matter bowdart launchers, a spinfusors explosive-disk gun, four bolt guns, two vol-tech ray emitters, five goblin sphere catapults, ten death wands, a wrist mounted hellwhip, two shoulder mounted shrike catapults, a spinal mounted long ranged anti-personal plasma missiles, ankle-socket tactical nuclear mine layers, and a high powered anti-vampire water cannon.”

He looked at me. He actually tilted his head forward to look over his glasses.

“You cannot take any of that into a jail cell, Mr. Miles. Not even for what is going to be a very short stay.”

I pouted. “Fine.” I rolled my shoulders, then tapped my knuckles against my chest. I closed my eyes and thought: Diiiisconnect!

Poppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppop!

Have you ever had that feeling where a tiny part of your body randomly detatches and then starts floating freely around in your guts? Imagine that, but times a billion and make all the bits made of hard metal. I squeezed all the junky bits near my chest, then reached into my shirt. I started to tug the weaponry out through my skin, but I cunningly used my shirt to conceal it, so it looked like I was just pulling stuff out of my shirt. Each weapon clinked and clunked and thumped as I put them onto the tray, piling them all up – every gleaming bit of chrome, every set of whirring energy batteries, every ticking bomb, and every water tank. It was twice as tall as me!

The black cop shook his head. “Good goddamn, son.”

I beamed. “Don’t worry! The right to bear arms is a constitutional right!”

The black cop frowned. “If I can’t buy a bump stock, I don’t think you should get one of these, kid.” He picked up one of the tactical nuclear mines, pointing it so the nuclear symbol with the death head center aimed at me. He waggled it slightly.

I pouted. “I only use it on bad people!”

P90 frowned. “I don’t give up my guns,” she said.

The black cop sighed loudly.

I turned and gently bumped my head against P90’s shoulder. “Come onnn!” I said.

“I wouldn’t give up my guns even if the Princess ordered it,” P90 said, frowning. “I was ordered, by her father, to protect her with my very- stop that.” I had been bumping my head against her shoulder between every word. I drew back, looking at her with my biggest, most puppy of dog eyes.

P90 groaned. “Fine,” she said, reaching into her vest. She tugged out the fireball wand she had been using, then set it down in the tray next to my tray.

I crossed my arm. “One gun, P90?” I asked, narrowing my eyes with the upmost of suspicion. P90 scowled. The black cop looked skeptical too. P90 let out an even bigger sigh. She knelt down, her jeans straining against her rump. She tugged one legging up, revealing a small wand of frost strapped to her ankle. Then she lifted the another ankle, revealing a brace of returning +1 daggers of acid contained in glass beakers to keep them from dripping. She yanked the wand out and unwound the daggers, their glass beakers clinking together. Setting them down, she reached under her left armpit and pulled out what looked like an AK-47 that had had the butt sawed off so it didn’t have a stock. She detached the banana magazine, set both down, then rolled back the sleeve of her shirt, revealing another huge ass knife strapped to her forearm.

The cop nodded, looking satisfied.

Then P90 shrugged off her vest. Under her shoulders were strapped two concealed bandoleers, each one lined with thin sticks of red that looked like grenades. She laid those both down, then took a pair of concealed laser pistols from her hips. Finally, she opened her mouth, popped a tooth off, and then held it in her palm. She touched her fingertip to the tooth and it whirred and clicked as it unfolded, expanding and growing until she was holding an assault rifle made of rock candy bone and taffy. She set it down next to the rest of her weapons.

“Is that all?” the cop asked.

“Well,” P90 said, putting one hand on her bicep.

“Heyyyy!” I made finger guns at her.

She popped her bicep open like it was a hinge, revealing another grenade, setting that down.

“Heyyyyyyyy!” I made more finger guns.

One movie style smash cut later, and I was sitting in my cell, looking at the bars ... They were made of metal. Nice shiny metal. But still metal. I focused, then shrank myself so that I was the size of a mouse. Then I scampered through the bars and then grew to my full size. I beamed and walked down the corridor of the jail to the cell where the two golems were waiting. I leaned against the bars. P90 had grabbed onto the exposed bits of ceiling metal and was grunting as she lifted and lowered herself, doing cool girl workouts.

“Can I ask why you’re made of candy?” I asked, curiously.

P90 looked down at me, then up at the ceiling again. Then she yelped and dropped to the ground with a thump. “How did you get out of your cell!?”

“Hey! Get back in your cell!” the black cop shouted from the front desk. “Your family will be here soon with bail and the UN is sending an ambassador to deal with the princess. So just sit your butts tight and we’ll get this all sorted out, ya hear?”

I sighed, then stepped backwards up against the cell across from the two golems and the dwarven princess, shifting to be super thin, then growing to normal size again. Once I was done, G282 was looking at me with wide eyes.

“So, it’s true,” she said, slowly.

“Yup!” I said. “I’m cool!”

“I heard about your shapeshifting abilities. But I wasn’t sure I believed them,” G282 said, shaking her head slowly.

I snickered. “So, uh, why are you made of candy?”

P90 sighed. “I was constructed by the gnomes of Wonkstar.” She put her hand on her bicep, grinning. “Skeleton of reinforced magic rock candy, muscles of triple threaded bubblesynth duragum, with an internal power source created by layered radioactive taffy. All the complexity of a full golem, but I can be repaired with simple sugars.” She grinned. “Just throw some baking sugar at me, and I can get back from being taken down to twenty five percent of my bod, so long as my taffy core or my crystal-core brain isn’t taken out.”

“Whoaaaaa!” I whispered. “Also, it makes you taste delicious!”

P90 looked like I had smacked her right in the face. “You don’t EAT candy golems!”

“Whoever said anything about eating you?” I purred and wiggled my eyebrows

P90’s brow furrowed.

“I believe he’s referring to cunnilingus,” G282 whispered.

I wriggled my eyebrows even more.

“W-What!?” P90 spluttered. “We’re golems! We don’t have sexual desires!”

But she was blushing pretty hard. I grinned, sprawling against the bars of my cell. “Well, okay, if you don’t have sexual desires, why do you have sexual characteristics? And why are you so freaking cute?”

“S-Science reasons!” P90 snapped. “Or because the gnomes that built me are fucking perverts!” She flushed. “And I’m ... I don’t care if you think I’m cute. I-Idiot.” She grabbed onto the ceiling and started doing rad cool girl arm lifty exercises again.

As she grunted away, I shifted my gaze to G282 and the sleeping princess. The princess was on the cot of the cell, snoring quietly, while G282 sat next to her, petting her hair gently. “So, uh, why did the Princess want to talk to me? And her name was Kira, right?”

G282 sniffed, lifting her head. “Her name is Kira Preen Nashem Vin Lim, the Princess Beneath the Mountains and Heir to the Gemstone Asteroids, daughter of King Logarn Preen Nashen Vin Lor and Queen Beardless Preen Nashen Vin Zin.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “I dunno, half of that sounds like her parent’s names.”

G282 smiled shyly. “I suppose that is true. But if you don’t know where your blood came from, then how can you know your future?”

“I dunno where my blood came from,” I said, cheerfully. “But my parents are Merton Miles Castrovel and Relix Miles Castrovel and a bunch of other titles. Like, I think she’s at least two different kinds of Princess and maybe an empress. I dunno, I never tried to keep track.” I shrugged slightly.

“We know,” G282 said, nodding. “We know the tale of Relix Castrovel. She sought to free herself from a marriage contract by following the letter of the law to spite the spirit.” She smiled. “Marry a clueless kidnapee from a world that had never even known the Five Talon Empire or magic, so she would have a husband she could easily control.” She shook her head. “But then Merton Miles turned the tables on her.” She leaned forward, her silver hair spilling around her shoulders. “Is it true they hate each other?”

“Wiggidy what!?” I yelped. “No! Mom and Dad fell turbo in love! They rub noses all the time! The most purest form of love ever!”

“But he cheats on her constantly, according to the rumors we’ve heard,” G282 said.

“No, she always knows when he bones other ladies,” I said, shaking my head. “Your rumors are dumb. And wrong. And hurtful and mean. Fortunately, I can forgive you.” I nodded, sagely. “You had bad rumor givers. So, I just need to find them and beat them up.”

G282 shrugged. But before she could ask me whatever she was going to ask me, I gasped.

“Wiggidy wait mark two!” I said. “What the freaking heckaroonies did your Princess want with me? I’m neither played by Ewan McGregor OR Alec Guinness, so I can’t help her by being a rad space hermit wizard ninja samurai fighter pilot.” I frowned, slightly. “And what shot off your deceleration cap? Why did you escape pod from your ship?”

P90 dropped from the ceiling with a grunt. The two golems looked at each other.

“We ... don’t know,” P90 admitted.

“Wiggidy what mark three!?” I yelped.

“We woke up in the escape pod,” G282 said. “We were stored there, as a tertiary backup. But we were never told anything besides protecting the Princess. P90 protects her in a combat scenario, I protect her in a diplomatic or romantic scenario.” She nodded slightly. “But we weren’t told details about her mission, in case we were captured and forced to talk.”

“But you’re super badass golems! Who could force you to talk!?” I asked.

“Anyone with a golem hacking kit,” P90 said.

“Or a gun to the Princess’ head,” G282 said, nodding.

I frowned. As much as I hated to admit it or think about it, not everyone in the universe was as nice as me or Dad or the black cop – who, lets be super honest, was just doing his job. Some people would be jerks and hack into the brain of two awesome and cool golem ladies. I nodded. “Well, then, we just need to wait until the Princess wakes up. It’s not like the bad guys can sneak past the entire United Nations Space Defense Force and the San Francisco Police Force and just walk in and shoot you!”

“Hank, what are you doing here?” the black cop asked.

I craned my head around the bars and saw that a bored looking Asian guy was standing before the front desk. Hank, the Asian guy, smiled, then pulled out his pistol and shot the black cop three times in the chest. I gaped in shock, utterly stunned, even as the black cop’s chair squealed backwards on their wheels and he sprawled out of the chair onto the ground with a wet splat. Hank turned slowly, then started to walk down the corridor.

“What the fuck happened!?” P90 asked.

“They are here, Lord Darkeye,” Hank said, speaking into a bit of non-earth looking technology. I mean, it might be Earth technology. But most humans didn’t make squids into cellphones. A moment later, he spoke again: “Yes, I understand.”

He lifted his pistol to his head.

By that point, I had shrunk to mouse size. I leaped off the ground and shot towards Hank. My tiny mouse-body hit the gun and it went flying, the bullet pinging into the ceiling with a spray of sparks. I landed beside the black cop, then focused. Tiny tendrils grew from my back, sliding between his tummy and the floor. I found the bullet holes, then threaded the tendrils into his holes and then found the bullet bits. I whisked them out, my tendrils sewing as fast as I could, so that all the holes were closed up. The cop groaned quietly and I grew to human sized.

“Hank! What’s the delio!?” I asked.

But Hank was looking at his hand as if he didn’t know what to do.

“He’s been dominated! Knock him out!” G282 shouted. “Smash the transmitter before the bad guys show up!”

“Right!” I sprinted forward. “Sorry Hank!”

I held out my arm and rammed into him, clothes-lining the cop. His jaw cracked back and he sprawled on the ground, his squid-transmitter (squidmitter?) flying up into the air. I caught it and squished it into pulp. “Hah! Just in time!” I said, grinning.

A rippling series of cracks filled the air. Standing near the desk – between moi and moi guns – were four tall, skinny figures. They wore long purple robes mixed with hardened black armor, with curved helmets that covered their faces. Which I bet were totally evil looking. They had wicked looking black pistols and long, jagged swords. As they stood in the corridor, I noticed that they also had two dogs! Except instead of dogs, they were the worst dogs. And I like all kinds of dogs, from the tiny dogs made entirely out of shaking to the biggest dogs ever with all the fluff. But these dogs ... were ... like...

Brains.

Brains with four claw-legs attached to them.

Who would pet a brain!?

No one! That’s who!

Okay, that’s a lie. They were at least partly doggy, so maybe they would be funner to pet than they looked.

“Mind Flayers!” G282 screamed.

We preferred Illithid, a posh sounding voice echoed in my head as one of the tall figures stepped forward, lifting his pistol to aim at me. Step aside, young dragon, or I will flay your atoms apart with my gauss gun.

I growled. “Over my dead body!”

Technically, it will be through a fine field of particulates, but yes. Your proposal is acceptable.

The Mind Flayer pulled the trigger. I flung myself to the right and a beam of snarling green lightning roared out of the barrel of the pistol and, just as I had totally planned, it smashed into the bars of the Princess’ cell. The lightning tore through the bars at an angle, so it ripped through each one, leaving behind a huge smoldering furrow, like the bars had just decided to cease existing near the middle, giving plenty of room for anyone to crawl through. I laughed, then grabbed onto a bar on one of the non-shot cell doors. I yanked it as hard as I could.

And I could yank real hard.

The bar came free and I hurled it length wise down the corridor, so it caught the Mind Flayers in their tummies, sending them sprawling backwards with a series of angry hisses. Then I turned and saw that P90 and G282 were running towards the end of the corridor, to the far end of the jail. P90 was holding the Princess under one arm and had pulled out another freaking grenade. I ran after her.

“I thought you disarmed!” I shouted.

“I lied,” P90 said, flicking her wrist. The grenade whipped down the corridor and hit the brick wall. It exploded with a whump and we rushed through the smoke and out onto the street. Alarms were wailing from the jail. I looked around, and saw that there was a chain link fence between us and the escape, and a few cop cars were starting to roar across green grass and around the planters, to get as many cops here as quickly as possible. Behind us, the Mind Flayers were staring to fire their jerk guns. Green beams of light shot through the smoke and I grabbed the two girls and yanked them out of the way.

The beams hit the fence. The fence stopped existiing in a ten foot wide circle.

Then the beams kept going and hit some cars in the parking lot. Those cars exploded with a roar of flames and a spray of shrapnel as their frames crumpled and their fuel went up. Fortunately, the beams stopped there. But they hadn’t just blasted fence and car. It had also turned out protective haze of dust into just, uh, empty air. The Mind Flayers could see us if we ran past the door, and they sent their dogs forward with growling brain noises.

Ugh.

Brain noises were really squishy when they lacked skulls.

P90 scowled. “Okay, we steal a car, we get out of here,” she said.

One of the brain-dogs leaped through the hole and right into my psi-sword. The cutting edge of the sword hit the brain and I sent it flying back into the other brain dog. Despite the fact that my psi-sword was made of hot and slice, the brain-dog didn’t actually get burned or cut! Instead it just was flung backwards and after a few seconds, the two critters would get up. And the Mind Flayers were getting closer moment by moment.

“Figure out how one of the cars work, I’ll cover you,” P90 was saying to G282.

“Better idea!” I said, then leaped forward. As I leaped, I changed.

I was normally a cute small dragon or a human.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be a dragon dragon. And when I was full dragon, I went full motherflipping dragon. Mom had once measured my wingspan at almost fifty feet, and my foreclaws could pick up a van if they combined the awesome power of lefty and righty. So, it was pretty easy to scoop up the girls – golems and princess and all – as I beat my wings and soared up into the air, flying above San Francisco bay. I laughed.

“Hah!” I said, looking back over my shoulder. My tail whipped from side to side. “Beat that, Mind Jerks.”

The Mind Flayers stood next to one another in a perfect line for a bit.

Then, as one, they started to float upwards into the air, flying after me.

“More like Cheating Flayers,” I grumbled, then shouted. “I’m going to shift all of you to a comfortable room in my rib-cage, with seat belts and stuff!”

“You’re what!?” P90 shouted.

But then I smashed them into my chest. I turned my scales permeable, sculpting the room between my lungs. I made bone bits that they could hold onto and added some leathery tendon things to hold them tight. Then I added a transparent bit at the front of my chest, right under my neck, so they could see what was going on! Then I closed my wings and went into a whirling, corkscrewing dive.

P90 clenched her jaw.

G282 screamed.

Princess Kira remained knonked out cause sleep spells are just the freaking worst.

This dive meant that I dodged the four gauss beams that would have torn apart huge chunks of my rump and tail. The Mind Flayers fanned outwards. Their flight was eerie and creepy as seeing a smiling clown. They didn’t flap wings or spread their arms. They just stood, spines back, feet facing the ground, and hovered like they were on segways. More like skyways. That combined with their flapping cloaks and the fact they were gross uggos was not a goodly combo.

Then, delight!

Wailing sirens rang out and I saw two SWAT sky-cars joining the chase. They flew using a combination of human know how and magic. The heavy armor plating and the guns were all human. The flying was magic! And the cops inside were armored and prepped against any kind of nasty magical crimes. They flew behind the Mind Flayers, who were continuing to pepper the air with gauss beams as I twisted and wound, carefully flying away from any sky-scrapers so their misses would hit air.

“Unidentified humanoids!” A woman’s voice shouted. “Stand d-”

I looked back, worried the Mind Flayers had blasterated the SWAT cars apart.

Instead, two of them had sheathed their swords and pistols, then placed their fingers against their temples. Shimmers around their heads made my eyes widen.

“Yes, Master,” the SWAT girl said, still speaking into the microphone. “We shall destroy them.”

“That’s cheating!” I roared. “I can’t beat up innocent coppicers!”

The SWAT cars roared forward, their forward mounted machine guns already hammering away. I yelped and backwinged hard, but this only meant that I got shot mostly rather than all-ly. Fortunately, even high caliber machine guns weren’t that great at getting through dragon scales. Unfortunately, enough of anything can find the weak bits. Tiny stinging burns started to flare as bullets bit between scales and I yelped, my wings missing a beat. I fell slightly and the SWAT cars swung to show me their broadsides.

The sides opened and there were the heavily armed, highly trained coppers who had been just moments before been about to rescue me. They had freaking grenade launchers.

“Okay, this is going to feel weird as heck!” I shouted.

I shrank.

In one instant, I had gone from being proper dragon szied to human sized.

To keep from smooshing my passengers, though, I expelled the organ-bit I had stuck them into out of my side during the transfer, keeping it attached to my body by a strand of hardened gristle. It swung below me as I let my momentum and the lateral movement of the first SWAT car drag me into said van. I caught a grenade as it was fired, tossed it out of the car before it exploded. With my left arm dragged behind me by the weight of my passenger-organ, I had only my right arm to block a vibroknife swung at my forehead. Then I grew a third arm and shifted my left arm to my back, so it could keep holding while my two free arms got to work.

I grabbed the SWAT girl who was trying stab me by the wrist. I twisted her arm aside. “Sorry!” then I headbutted her. She groaned as she collapsed. “Sorry!”

Two SWAT dudes brought their SMGs to bear on me. I leaped up, kicking. Their SMGs went flying out the open side of the car and they staggered against the inside compartment. “Sorry!” I said, grabbing one and smashing his head against the wall – gently as I could while still stunning him. The other had jerked his vibro-knife free. He swung it not at me, but at the strand that connected me to the carrying organ. I yelped and as the organ slithered free, the scrap of gristle squealing as it dragged along the floor.

I flung myself forward, catching it with both arms.

The mind controlled SWAT guy leaped for my back – and fell right into an upper cut arm I grew out between my shoulder blades. He went sprawling back against the closed door on the other side of the SWAT car.

A sudden brrrupt of bullets jerked my attention around.

Below me, P90 had cut open a bit of the carrying organ and was leaning half out. She held one of the dropped SMGs and was firing bullets up at the other SWAT car, forcing it to skid and slew to the side to avoid getting shot in the fragile bits.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Don’t kill anyone!”

“They’re trying to kill us!” she shouted back.

I’d have to explain to her about my theme song later.

I rolled forward, letting myself fall off the SWAT car. It continued to zoom away, the driver no longer trying to bring its front guns to bear. Maybe he had shook off the Mind Flayer’s mind control. Maybe he couldn’t fire guns anymore because I had knocked everyone else out. Whatever the matter, I let him go. Instead, I focused on flying upwards. It was hard without wings. So, maybe the wings did do something. But as I held the organ beneath me – the rippling flesh looking alarmingly thin and easily tearable, with the spread of San Francisco wheeling beneath us.