Firedrake Chapter 22

The battle with Onslaught had been a tremendous success for the Department, according to the Public Information officers that spoke with Drake. “Incredible ratings”, they had raved as they stood beside his bed in the infirmary. The doctors, too, had been amazed - not at the fight that most of them had witnessed, but at the unearthly healing rate Drake was exhibiting. He had simply smiled and popped another of the pills given to him by Gunsmoke’s medical contact. Apparently, whatever was in them had kicked his already accelerated healing rate into overdrive.

When Hart finally arrived to check up on him, Drake handed her a piece of paper. On it, in large block letters, were the words, “I’M TAKING A VACATION. DON’T BUG ME FOR TWO WEEKS OR I’LL EAT SOMEONE IMPORTANT.”

With a knowing smile, Hart handed him a plane ticket to Colorado that was already prepared in his name, along with the numbers of a dozen psychotherapists and counselors.

Once the Department van had delivered him to the safehouse, Drake stepped through the narrow gate of the white picket fence, closing it carefully behind him. It squeaked mightily, and he made a mental note to oil it while he was at the house. The front door opened before he had even mounted the steps, and the enormous frame of his brother flew out in a rush, hair flying as gigantic feet slapped on the ground. A thrilled shout erupted from the wide mouth and he slammed into Drake with all his usual force, nearly bowling over the reptilian booster.

“I told him you were coming,” said the woman in the doorway of the home. Still wearing the blue jumpsuit that was some sort of standard issue for her employer, Sala had apparently remained on as Monster’s security detail. She, too, was the owner of a happy smile at the sight of the massive scaled booster.

“I could tell,” Drake said as he enveloped Monster in a tight embrace. His wings wrapped forward and around the pair, cocooning them both for a brief moment before folding back into place against Drake’s back.

“Good to see you, monkey-man,” Drake told his brother, ruffling his hair as he always did in greeting. Monster reached up, placing a hand nearly as large as Drake’s atop the emerald scales of his brother’s head and rubbing in a similar manner.

“Ain’t quite the same, is it?” Drake teased, patting Monster on the shoulder. “You been good while I was gone?”

“Yes,” Monster said, nodding emphatically. He stole a glance over his shoulder at Sala, who was suppressing a grin.

“I see,” Drake said, not missing the obvious visual clue. “What’d he do?”

“He’s the perfect angel!” Sala protested, pasting on a look of shock at Drake’s words. “Aren’t you, Monster?”

“Yes, I am!”

“Well, all right, then,” Drake said. “Since no one wants to tell me, I guess it can’t be that bad.”

“It wasn’t. I mean it,” Monster said, instantly biting his lip as the words tumbled from his mouth. He looked down at the ground, shuffling his feet and wiggling his fingers.

“What did you break?” Drake asked, struggling to keep from grinning.

“He didn’t break anything, Drake,” Sala said, waving her finger back and forth in front of his face. Out of view of Monster, she winked at Drake and he nodded.

“Okay. Let’s go on inside,” he said, flapping a hand to show that he was waving away the entire issue. The trio stepped into the safehouse, Sala closing and locking the door behind them. Drake followed the eagerly bouncing form of his brother into the living room, taking a step to the side and slumping bodily into a reinforced chair. His wings were in a bit of a bind, and the house was cold enough to make him uncomfortable, but he did not seem to care. Sala kept walking past the others, smiling as she left the two brothers alone and continued into the kitchen.

“I saw you on TV,” Monster said as he dropped to the floor and sat with his tree-trunk legs crossed in front of him. “I saw you beat up that bad man.”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t all that bad,” Drake said. “Just thought he could take on your big bro and win.”

“You showed him!”

“Sure did,” Drake answered with a nod. “Then I helped him get better.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he was hurt. You don’t like being hurt, and neither did he, so I got the doctors to take care of him.”

“And then he goes to jail?” Monster asked.

“Him and a whole mess of other folks do,” Drake said. He waved his hand again. “So what have you been up to while I’ve been gone?”

“My picture!” Monster shouted, jumping from the floor and running for his room. His feet pounded the floor, sending vibrations through the chair in which Drake sat.

“Didn’t see that one coming,” Drake laughed. He leaned forward in the chair, freeing up his wings and tail and flexing them a bit to restore circulation. Already he could feel the tension of the past weeks draining from him. It never failed to amaze him how a few minutes with his brother could be so therapeutic for him. Days, not to mention weeks spent away from him built Drake’s stress level to unbelievable heights as he worried about how well Monster was doing, if he was behaving himself, and how his treatments were proceeding. Just getting to be close to him again was relieving. Being in the same home, with its kitschy accessories and movie posters on seemingly every wall, was like a magic pill that ripped away at the depression and anger that had been threatening to tear him apart.

“Hey,” Sala’s voice intruded on his private thoughts and he opened his eyes to see the tall brunette standing beside the chair, a steaming mug in one hand. She extended it to him. “Thought you might like a cup.”

“Thanks,” he said, taking the cup in one paw. He waved the other at a nearby couch. “Take a load off.”

“Nah. Got stuff to do. Besides, figured you two might like some time alone.”

“Thinking I might take him out later, let him get some air. What do your bosses say about things like that?”

“Official word is don’t. Strange thing, though: I don’t usually follow the party line,” she said with a sly grin.

“Yeah? Knew there was a reason I liked you.”

“That, and I look really smooth in the outfit,” she teased back as she ran a hand down her flank to emphasize her statement.

“Too smooth. Throw in a few scales and you‘ll be a show-stopper,” Drake said, continuing the game. He looked past her to make certain that Monster was still in his room. “So, what exactly did he do that you guys are hiding so wonderfully?”

“Had a little disagreement with the refrigerator. New door, no big deal. Happens to all of us from time to time, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Tore up a couple myself.”

“So, uh, the fight? Looked fun, but kinda rough,” she said, arching an eyebrow. Drake knew that not only was Sala no slouch when it came to fighting, but she actually seemed to relish the opportunity to engage in a good brawl. The comment could have been a compliment as easily as an attempt to get information about the fight.

“I’ve had worse. The trip to the dentist afterward wasn’t much fun, I’ll tell you that much,” Drake said with a chuckle. He drank deeply from the coffee, barely noticing the taste. “Turns out I can regenerate my teeth, too. Who knew?”

Sala laughed and stepped over to the chair, exchanging a knuckle-to-knuckle tap with Drake before leaving. The strength of her hand surprised Drake for a second. He wondered about it only for a brief moment before Monster rumbled back into the room. His hands clutched a sheet of paper close to his breast.

“Close your eyes!” he ordered. Drake complied, waving a hand in front of him to emphasize his self-imposed blindness.

“Ooh, I can’t see, I can’t see,” he said, trying his best to sound helpless. It did not hurt the effort when the lack of vision brought back memories of having been blinded by the gunshot in Austin.

“Hold out your hands,” Monster prompted. Drake stopped waving and extended his hand, palm up. A moment later, he felt the softness of the paper even as his ears picked up the crinkling sound of Monster placing it there.

“Now open.”

Drake opened his eyes, blinking once, and broke into a wide grin as he saw the image on the paper. Scrawled in crayon, with a distinctive lack of professional skill that he had come to associate with drawings by Monster, was a picture of Drake standing on stage beside Patriot. Drake was little more than a green shape with wings, but he was pleased to see that he was larger than Patriot - who was essentially a blue blob with black hands and feet.

“Did you draw this?” he asked.

“Yes, I did,” Monster replied, beaming as he rocked back and forth on his feet. “All by myself.”

“By yourself? All right!” Drake crowed, reaching out to wrap the young man in a hug. Moments later, when they had separated, he grinned up at the towering figure of his younger brother.

“You hungry?” he asked, cocking his head to the right. If Monster was surprised by the sudden change of topic, it did not show.

“Yeah. You want pizza?” Monster asked, looking over his shoulder at the telephone that hung on one wall of the living room.

“No delivery tonight. I was thinking one of those ‘all you can eat’ kind of places,” Drake countered. “Little bit of everything to choose from? Sound good?”

Monster nodded enthusiastically, the effort causing two vertebrae to pop loudly in the room.

“Yeah. Me too,” Drake said. He stood from the chair, stretching his wings out slightly with a rustling sound. Not turning, he simply yelled. “Hey, Sala! Get your stuff. Let’s go eat.”

Stepping around the door, the security specialist merely nodded as she finished putting on a light leather jacket. Something looked odd about the jumpsuit until Drake realized she was not wearing the holstered automatic at her hip. He pointed it out and she shrugged.

“You said you wanted to go out, so I packed it under the jacket. Didn’t want the hassles.”

“Put on a shield. Any questions, you’re with me,” Drake said, tapping at the gold badge on his belt.

“Better this way,” she countered. “All the attention goes to you. I blend into the background. No one sees me unless it’s too late.”

“Good point.”

Monster ran back to his room and came out a minute later dressed in baggy BDU pants in the same tiger-striped pattern Drake wore, topped off with a brightly-grinning happy-face tee shirt. Well-worn sneakers covered his feet, and he had tied back his hair with an odd headband. Dark in color, it was dominated by a metal plate that curved across his forehead. The plate was engraved with a swirling pictogram, and Drake leaned close to examine it.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“My ninja head protector,” Monster said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Drake turned to regard Sala, who stood leaning casually against the door frame, trying her best to conceal a quiet chuckle.

“He’s been watching Naruto videos,” she explained. “Now he’s decided he wants to be a ninja.”

“Beats wanting to be a politician,” Drake muttered. “Still, you got my kid brother watching those weird cartoon things?”

“Anime,” Sala corrected gently as she gripped the knob of the door to the garage. “And they’re fun. You should watch some sometime.”

“I’ll pass. So can you get these videos anywhere?” Drake asked, trying to sound casual.

Sala held the door wide, exposing a muted green Hummer. Monster scampered happily up beside the vehicle, letting himself into the front passenger seat. He zipped the seat belt into place and looked behind him as Drake struggled to climb into the back.

“Movie stores have some,” Sala said. She closed her own door and adjusted her restraints as Drake settled into place. He looked forward, seeing her eyes reflected in the mirror. “Why? You decide you want some after all?”

“Nah. Not my style,” Drake said with a shake of his head. His eyes, however, flicked forward as he lowered his head slightly. Sala caught the gesture, knowing that he was indicating his brother, and inclined her head the tiniest of fractions before hitting the button for the garage door opener. She paused a second to scan the surroundings before starting the vehicle and backing out of the drive.

The three joked back and forth for a while as they drove, and then Drake leaned forward with a sharpness that was almost frightening. His arm shot across the space in the Hummer, finger pointing unerringly toward a massive building in the distance.

“There. We’re going there,” he declared.

“That’s a mall,” Sala said slowly, dragging out the last syllable as she looked into the mirror at Drake. He laughed aloud as Monster clapped his hands in glee.

“Why, yes it is,” Drake said. He reached forward and dropped a hand on Monster’s left shoulder. “We’re going shopping,” he declared.

“A shopping mall,” Sala reiterated. “Full of people.”

“What’s the matter? They too good for me and Monster?”

“No. They’re too fragile for the horrible things that always happen when you go out in public,” she said, finally letting a smile slip onto her face.

“Hey, I haven’t broken anyone… well, unless you count Onslaught….oh, and that media guy…and… Never mind.”

Sala laughed. “Thought so,” she said. “All right. The Drake brothers want to go to the mall, then to the mall it is!”

Monster clapped his hands again, his face lighting up at the thought of going shopping. From his own seat, Drake’s expression hardened a bit. He knew that the Department had kept a close rein on Monster ever since he had been brought to the community for his protection. This might well be his first real chance to get out and experience life outside of one of the many secure locations that had been provided. Even the hospital where he was checked once a week was within the bounds of the guarded community. Most of their supplies were trucked in and distributed through Department networks, and the businesses that did operate within their coverage area were carefully screened and their employees vetted by the government.

He’s a prisoner, Drake thought, looking at the happily-smiling face of his brother, visible as it was in the side mirror. He can’t leave. Not now, not ever, if they have their way.

Monster’s strength had continued to grow when the blocking agents Colleen Hart had authorized were stopped under Drake’s threats of bodily harm. The progress reports Drake had seen showed him that his brother’s physical power would soon eclipse his own, and they had advised him that there was no way of determining just how far it would progress. Were Monster a so-called ‘normal kid’, it would be of little issue. He would be another genebooster, making his way in whatever manner he felt best. But due to his mental and emotional retardations, Monster was a special case. No one could predict what he might do, and the men and women who made their livings in offices far above Drake’s pay grade had decided that he was, therefore, a risk that they could not take. Far better to seal him away in the boundaries of a secured town than to have him loose upon the world.

Drake hoped that the one thing that none of them had counted on was the fact that he would do what he wanted where Monster was concerned, and accept the consequences of his actions as necessary. He had done so for years before the government had stepped in and taken custody of the younger Drake brother, citing the lifestyle and instability of the older as a reason to safeguard Monster. Even had Drake been able to hire more than a bargain-basement attorney, there would have been little chance of beating the case that the government threw at him. Drake’s own past had doomed him from the start.

As the mall loomed closer in the view of the Hummer, Drake remembered the powerlessness he had felt, sitting in that courtroom. His hands and feet had been shackled - ‘for security purposes’, they had explained - and an enormous muzzle made of durite clamps and high-strength polymers covered his face for the same reason. He was forced to communicate with his attorney through a pen and paper, a skill which he had at that time not trained to a great degree. His talents were based on staying alive, and writing had not been a large part of that particular skill set.

They brought up his history, describing in graphic detail the violence which had followed him through his younger years - both at home and later on the streets. His time at a training academy of sorts, where he had been part of a group that was later listed as a violent gang by the FBI following their forcible extraction from a jail cell of a ‘terrorist’ whose only crime had been his inability to control his electrical generation powers. His self-imposed exile to the wilderness, where he spent almost two years living alone and away from society in general. His own tendency to solve problems with physical force rather than seeking peaceful alternatives. They wrapped up their case by discussing his father’s murder and the subsequent incarceration of his mother, followed by the fact that Drake had taken over raising Monster.

In the end he was vilified by the whole process. Classed as a danger to the safety of the Nation, he was forced to watch as custody of his brother was taken over by the government. Monster was screaming and crying, and seven bailiffs were required to move him. Drake very nearly shattered his restraints in an effort to stop them leading the frightened boy out of the courtroom, but was stopped by the arrival of a single woman.

She was dressed severely, in a business suit that gave her an aura of authority and with hair razor-cut to exacting standards. Her eyes were as icy as her demeanor, but it was the fact that she looked at him as though he was an equal rather than a terrifying creature that made him take pause. She dropped a business card on the table before him, nodded once, and walked away.

The card had belonged to Colleen Hart, who had just been placed in a position to deploy superhuman agents at the request of the government. He still had a couple of those cards in his ID carrier, but these days they were mostly to pass on to people he had offended so that they could efficiently file their complaints.

Hart had explained to him that she was in need of someone with his particular abilities, and, should he be interested, she could see to it that he would be able to spend time with Monster. She seemed understanding, if a bit mercenary, and Drake had jumped at the chance. His only other option at the time had been to call on some old debts and tear Monster away from the Feds who were holding him, then try to make a break for it. He knew the chances of that succeeding were slim to none. Where would they go that they could not be recognized?

Months of intensive training followed, with Drake spending more time in a classroom than he had in many years. He was fast-tracked through his G.E.D. and then taught the basics of law enforcement. Once his training had ended he was placed with a Department advisor who took him through a series of tests to determine his aptitudes, and was then placed where they believed he could do the most good.

At times, Drake still had the same bad taste in his mouth about the things he was forced to do as he had experienced on that day in the courtroom. Most often, Hart simply pointed him at a problem and let him deal with it in whatever manner he felt was best, but occasionally she placed him into situations that required drastic solutions - such as the one with Onslaught. He knew that there were better ways of dealing with that particular situation than his maiming of the man, but no one else in the Department had stepped up to implement those measures.

He shook off the dreary thoughts as Sala pulled them into a parking place and threw the vehicle into Park. Monster was already shrugging out of his safety belt when Drake once more placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Be good,” he warned. The words were simple, but were delivered with every bit of Drake’s authority. Monster nodded solemnly, then waited for Drake to exit the Hummer before he followed suit. He held out his hand and Drake enveloped it with his own, feeling the coolness of the flesh against his scales.

Sala kept pace behind them by a few feet, managing to look as though she was not immediately connected to the pair as they walked across the parking lot. Monster looked at the building, his head tilting back and forth, up and down, as he tried to take it all in. His face was stretched wide with a smile. To his right, the enormous figure of Drake smiled as well, but in reaction to the pleasure of his brother.

They approached the glass doors to the mall, stepping in under an overhang after they had carefully negotiated a crosswalk. Drake was allowing Monster to call the shots on how they proceeded, and he laughed quietly as the younger Drake brother held out an arm to bar their path until he could look both ways to make certain no vehicles were approaching them. Once they were clear, he nodded and led them across.

“So where do we wanna go first?” Drake asked as they stepped into the shade from the overhang. “I’m thinking we see what kind of video games they have, maybe snag a couple of those giant pretzel things…”

He reached out to open the door, holding it for both Monster and Sala and following them inside. Monster was looking wide-eyed around them, his face split with a massive grin as he tried to take in everything at one time. Seeing the younger man on the verge of sensory overload, Drake patted him on the shoulder and winked down at him.

“Let’s start with a pretzel,” he suggested. They walked into the mal, stepping around the base of a dual escalator, and the enormity of the place hit home for Monster. Two floors of shops, all brightly lit, with overlapping music and television sound, the mingling smells of bath products and hot food, and the constant underlying hum of voices made him giggle a bit. He pointed to a nearby store.

“What’s that?” he asked. Drake followed his finger.

“Bed O’ Nails,” Drake said. “Manicures and stuff. You want your fingernails painted?”

“No,” Monster said, looking at Drake as though he had suddenly gone insane. “That’s for girls.”

“Sure is,” Sala said, grinning. She leaned over to whisper in his ear. “It’d take ‘em an hour to paint Drake’s claws, anyway,” she told him. They both laughed. Drake made a show of examining his talons, as if he was actually considering the process. Monster tugged on the left strap of his shoulder holster to urge him onward.

“Come on, Francis,” he said. The trio moved further into the mall, drawing stares from the patrons. Most were frightened at the sight of the walking dragon, and the expressions on their faces were dead giveaways to that fact. They moved rapidly away from the perceived threat, which was fine with Drake. He had, in fact, been counting on that to give them more room to move about. A dozen or more patrons raised cell phones to snap photographs with their built-in cameras. Drake tried to give them his most non-threatening grin, conscious more now than ever before of his public image and how it could affect the Department at large.

The neared a standing column with a glowing map of the mall emblazoned on it. Drake traced a yellow talon down the list of shops until he found the place he wanted. “Pretzels,” he announced, once more ruffling Monster’s hair. As Monster worked to rearrange the unruly mop, Drake slipped a hand into his pocket and emerged with a black nylon wallet. He quickly extracted a couple of hundred-dollar bills and slipped them to Sala. Still watching his brother, Drake used the tip of his tail to indicate a store called Hot Flicks on the map and winked at the woman.

“I gotta grab something first,” Sala said aloud. “I’ll meet you guys at the pretzel place in ten.”

She took off before another word could be said.

“Well, looks like just you and me, monkey-man,” Drake said, once again taking Monster’s hand in his own. They began a slow walk through the interior of the mall, with Drake pointing out shops and making jokes about what they carried. As before, he noted that the majority of people were moving away from them. A quartet of security officers, however, were vectoring toward them. They were unarmed, Drake noted, save for one who carried a canister of what Drake figured to be pepper spray or tear gas on his left hip. Casually, he let his right hand drift downward, talons clicking on the badge attached to his belt. He slipped out his credentials as well, flipping open the thin wallet to display them.

“Afternoon, gents,” he said as the two groups neared one another. “Francis Drake, Department of Justice.”

“Is there a problem here, sir?” asked the one with the canister spray. His voice was trembling a bit in the presence of the two massive Drake brothers. Behind him, one of the other officers leaned to his partner and whispered. Drake could not hear what was being said.

“No problem. None at all. Just out to do a bit of shopping.”

“We’re gonna have a pretzel,” Monster declared, nodding and smiling. He was scratching at his left ear, one finger trying in vain to fit into the canal.

“Oh, yeah? That’s good,” the man said in reply. He bit at his lip for a moment as the two officers behind him continued to speak quietly. The fourth man stood at an almost perfect parade-rest position, carefully watching not only the interplay between the officer and Drake, but also the surroundings. A downward flick of the eye showed Drake the name on the gold plate affixed to his white uniform shirt: “Terrell”, the nameplate declared. Drake’s estimation of that officer climbed a bit as he realized the man had a decent grasp of situational awareness.

“Look, man, you’re trying to figure out what to say or do next, right?” Drake asked, returning his attention to the officer who had spoken to him. The man’s name was Tran. “It ain’t no thing. You can do whichever of the following sounds good. First, you can tell us to have a nice day and you can go on. Or, you can make a call to Justice and confirm my creds. Last option, you can ask us to leave.”

“There’s no reason you’d need to leave, sir,” Tran said. He held out a hand. “If I could see those ID papers, though?”

“Not a problem,” Drake said, handing them over. The conversation between the two officers in the back had become more animated, and Drake caught the words, ‘booster’ and ‘Onslaught’ in their hissed comments.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, directing his response to them. One of the pair grinned widely.

“I told you it was him, Donny,” he said, pointing at the other of the pair and grinning. “Man, I saw you on the ‘net when you went up against that Onslaught guy. That was sweet!”

“Thanks,” Drake said dryly. “It’s not every day that I get to be on worldwide broadcasts.”

“Yeah, well, you did good. We were all sick of hearing him get on TV and say how everybody was scared of him and stuff.”

“Thanks,” Drake said again. Tran, apparently satisfied with the credentials and his own officers comments, returned the wallet and nodded his head.

“Thank you, Agent Drake,” he said. “Sorry about stopping you. It’s just…” he paused.

“Just say it’s ‘cause of the guns,” Drake suggested with a smile. “That pretty much covers it.”

“Yes, sir. You folks have a nice day, and thanks for shopping with us.”

The four men continued on, splitting into two pairs once they had gone fifty feet or so past Drake and Monster. A few moments later and they separated completely, each one going their own way and filtering back into the crowd.

“Did we do something bad, Francis?” Monster asked.

“No, buddy. They’re just making sure that, well, that nobody’s pretending to be me, you know. Like Halloween.”

The explanation seemed to placate Monster, and the pair continued on toward the pretzel stand, seemingly oblivious to the terrified glances coming their way from within the stores they passed. They paused once so Drake could let Monster feed a quarter into a vending machine for handful of M&M’s, and then again to admire the five-foot wide screen of a plasma TV hanging in the window of an electronics store.

“That thing’s big,” Monster said around a mouthful of chocolate. Drake nodded, watching as a baseball game unfolded in perfect clarity on the screen. They stood for a moment, watching as the batter took a swing at a curve ball and missed by a mile. The runner on second took advantage of the pitch to make a mad dash for third, and both Drake’s tensed as the catcher snapped the ball toward the third baseman.

“Go, go, go,” Drake muttered, watching the man slide headfirst toward the bag. His fingers grazed it a heartbeat before the ball snapped into the baseman’s glove, and both Drakes cheered as the runner was called ‘safe’. The station went to a commercial, and they continued on.

Moments later, they had a double fistful of hot pretzels and moved to a metal chair-and-table combination near the little stand to await Sala. Drake had just bitten into his jalapeno-flavored snack when the woman arrived, walking up beside them with a heavy bag in her hand.

“You, uh, you get what you need?” Drake asked as he gestured to one of the chairs. Sala sat, accepting the cheese-covered pretzel Monster was holding out for her. She took a small bite and nodded.

“Mmmm, this is good, Monster,” she said. “Did you pick this out?”

“I like cheese,” he said, words muffled by his own mouthful.

“Me, too.” Sala took another bite, then ripped a napkin from the metal holder on the table and used it to wipe excess cheese from her lips. She followed suit a moment later with Monster, dabbing up the yellow string that was running down his chin.

“O-Oh my God,” stammered a voice from behind them, in the area of the pretzel cart. Drake turned to look, a part of him expecting to see someone filled with fear, but noting also that the voice had seemed surprised rather than afraid.

The man he saw there was of average height and build, with sandy brown hair and shining eyes. He was clutching a pair of sacks, each loaded with merchandise from various stores. Presently he was rummaging through one of them, though his eyes never left the group at the table.

“You’re really him,” the man said. He pulled a bulky package from inside one of the bags and held it out in front of him as though it were a shield. Drake’s jaw dropped as he beheld what the man was displaying.

“Well, kiss my scaly ass,” he muttered. “They did it.”

A thin cardboard box in an almost neon blue color framed a cellophane window, through which could be seen green flannel with hints of yellow visible as well. A picture of his own face was on the box, though it had been toned down somewhat from the level of ferocity it normally displayed to the public. He was actually smiling, and a morphed picture of his hand rose on the opposite edge of the cellophane window, formed into a thumbs-up gesture. At the top of the box was the legend, “FIREDRAKE” in large block letters of brilliant metallic red.

“What in the hell?” Sala asked.

“They’re pajamas,” the man explained. “I got the slippers to go with them.” He began digging in the bag again, and emerged a few seconds later with a pair of giant fuzzy slippers, tipped with long yellow claws of a plush material.

“Those are your feet,” Monster said, looking from the slippers to Drake and back. He looked confused.

“Yup, kid. Sure are,” Drake said. He stood from the table, towering over the shopper, who blanched noticeably at the sudden size difference. Drake tapped at the box with a claw, almost daring it to not be real.

“Could…could you sign it for me?” the man asked, grinning as he once again fumbled in his bags. He came out a moment later with a set of Magic Marker felt-tip pens, tore open the pack and handed Drake a black one.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“No! Seriously!” the man said, almost pleading.

“Not that,” Drake said, waving his hand. “I meant the whole thing. They actually made pajamas!”

“I think they’re cute,” Sala teased, chuckling around a bite of pretzel. “Sign the man’s pajama’s, Drake. I mean, when else in your life will you get a chance like this?”

Drake shot her a murderous glare, but smiled at the man. “All right,” he agreed, popping off the cap of the pen. “What’s your name, slick?”

“Harry. Harry Callahan, sir.”

“No shit,” Drake said, lips peeling back in a wide grin. “Harry Callahan?”

“No relation,” Harry said, laughing a bit himself, even as he tried to back away from the frightening specter of the glistening teeth that had suddenly been bared.

“To Harry,” Drake said aloud, scrawling the words across the edge of the box as he spoke. “My number one fan. Francis Drake.”

“Thank you!” Harry gushed as Drake returned the box to him. He looked at the words and smiled. “Nobody’s gonna believe this!”

“Have a seat, Harry,” Drake invited. He indicated the other two present. “This is Monster and Sala.”

“Francis is my brother,” Monster said proudly. “I’m gonna be like him when I grow up.”

“That’s a good goal,” Harry replied, looking at the chair Drake had offered. He seemed hesitant, and Drake slapped at the seat with his tail.

“Come on, slick. Sit down. If I’ve really got a fan, he might as well have a pretzel with us. Right guys?”

Harry swallowed and took the proffered seat, piling his bags on the floor beside him. Drake slid a paper-wrapped pretzel across the table before retaking his own seat. There was a moment of awkward silence.

“You have my brother’s feet,” Monster said suddenly.

“Yeah. I like them,” Harry replied with a slow nod. “I saw your brother on TV with Patriot.”

“Me, too!” Monster crowed, leaning across the table, not caring that he put his right elbow atop what remained of Sala’s cheese-covered pretzel. “Patriot’s cool!”

“Sure is,” Harry said. “So when he said ‘hello to Monster’, he was talking about you. Wow, dude, that is so neat!”

“Patriot likes me,” Monster said with no little pride in his voice.

Drake took another bite of his pretzel, chewing noisily as he spoke. “So what is it you do, Harry?” he asked.

“I’m a programmer….” Harry began, the words trailing off as his eyes flicked away for a moment. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Drake asked, turning to look over his left shoulder in the direction the young man was staring. In the distance, a brilliant purple flash reflected off the walls of the mall. A second later, a scream rent the air. Drake grimaced and dropped his pretzel to the table.

“Well, that can’t be good,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED