[COMPLETE] [[**Sequel, The Hybrid Harold, is up!**]]
The first generation past the war has settled and the result is something no one from the past would recognize. In the United Human Alliance, the human run country that takes up much of the land m...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"...and then Claire broke his nose." Qui, my younger brother, spoke with exaggerated hand gestures and wide eyes. As if the story of Claire stopping a bar fight was the highlight of the century. I tried not to display my boredom, but it was hard. This was the call that I met my father on, just one week before our break out. This was the call that I used to bring backup to our fight. I couldn't focus on anything else, and at 16 he and my other younger brothers weren't on my radar.
An awkward silence prevailed, maybe I wasn't so good at hiding my boredom. I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. Of course, I'd come to the roof for this call, I sure as hell couldn't do it around my dorm mates. Christine and Margie were the best, but maybe not when I was trying to trick the most prominent dragon family into coming to my aid. Michael wasn't even there, of course, that was because he'd gotten detention.
"So do you have a boyfriend?" Kent, another of the triplets, asked me.
"Idiots, first call with Alenia and you're asking about her dating life and telling her boring ass stories about the bar." Damon, last of the triplets, smacked them both behind the head. "There are more important things to ask."
"Like what?" Kent scoffed. I couldn't help but agree, what could three sixteen-year-olds from the free country have to ask that was important?
"Well, Alenia, are you healthy? How is life in those horrid 'schools'?" This time it was Daniel, my older brother, who asked. I certainly didn't remember him from when I was a baby, the week or so before I was kidnapped hadn't made that much of an impression, but it was obvious that he remembered me. Somehow, that made tricking him into a fight harder. Stupid guilt.
"I'm healthy and life is alright," I answered. "School isn't too bad, if you keep your head down."
The lie seemed to impress the red-headed guys on the screen. "Why do I get the feeling that you don't keep your head down?"
I grinned despite myself at Qui's question. If only he knew. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I have a 4.0 GPA and an almost perfect attendance record." Save for that time that I skipped class because I was too embarrassed to see Michael. The director had been correct when he called me the perfect pet.
"You okay? You look... pissed." Damon asked. I tried not to seem shocked. Just thinking about the director made my wings burn.
"Is it because you're about to meet dad?" Daniel asked and I tried not to groan. These were wildly personal questions and yet the four brothers before me felt no shame asking. As if this wasn't our first time meeting or the blood in our veins overruled years apart.
"It's not about Sam or Naomi, well, maybe a bit Naomi," I said. It couldn't hurt for everyone to get the impression that I needed to be shown what they meant by family. Jamie had given me the idea (by explaining it step by step...). The Jones' were a people who felt a deep obligation to both their family and their matriarch. As both, my opinions had a lot of pull. I had to make them think they owned me, as their matriarch. That was the weak link I could use to pull them into the school. "Naomi is a bit..." How could I put it? Bitchy? Cocky? Overbearing? A cunt? "She's a lot to get used to." Especially since I already have a mom.
Daniel laughed, and his sentiment seemed shared by the rest of them. "That's mom. Good ole mom. It's endearing, after a while."
I doubt it.
"Oh, hey dad," Daniel said. Two more people joined my brothers on the couch. Naomi, of course, was easy to recognize. The red hair that she'd given to my brothers but not me, the well-defined muscles, and bright blue eyes that never held any doubt. Sam, however...
"Hi dad," The words spilled out of my smiling mouth before I could stop them. I barely even noticed that Michael had walked onto the roof and sat just out of view of the camera. Sam, my father, was obviously that. His eyes were brown just like mine, his hair may have been brown but it looked almost identical to my blonde locks, even our noses looked the same. I had never known my dad but when I looked at Sam I knew that was what he was.
His eyes watered and his jaw was set. If I had to guess, he hadn't known about me as long as Naomi had. "Alenia, you're all grown up."
"Oh, well, you know," I said awkwardly. More often than not I felt like a child thrown into a grown man's world, but he didn't need to know that. I needed to change the topic, my eyes watered as well and I didn't want to cry. "So I hear you're why I can do all sorts of crazy shit."
Michael laughed beside me, obviously considering my force fields a bit more than 'crazy shit', but no one on the video chat commented about the disembodied voice.
"Uh, yeah, I'm a harold," Sam said. "I still can't believe you inherited that." I could only shrug and so he was forced to ask, "So what all do you think you got from me?"
Naomi sat stone-faced, clearly upset by the line of questioning, but I was so excited to share. How had I hated my father for so long? "I can make, I dunno, force fields? I don't really know what to call them, but they're really useful. I can also destroy them." Which is extra convenient when your director is an experimenting harold maniac. "Other than that, I don't really know what's 'dragon' and what's 'harold'."
"You can destroy force fields?" Qui asked, shocked.
"Just set them on fire and they burn," I said with a shrug. "The trick is knowing where they start."
"You can't burn 'force fields'," Sam said, confused. "They're made by innate magic, they're the most powerful tool in any harold's arsenal."
"I've done it before," I said.
"No- you just can't-" Naomi said.
"For the record, there's nothing Alenia can't burn." Michael snapped. Just knowing what little he knew through me, Michael already wasn't a big fan of Naomi. Shock filled everyone's features and I turned the laptop so that everyone could see Michael.
"And who are you?" Qui snapped back, glaring at Michael. Despite the fact that Michael was my family exponentially more than the dragons on screen I wished he hadn't argued. Almost. How was I going to get them to help me if Michael made the same first impression with them that he did with me?
