DJ Zeets

Zeets sat back and watched the performance, her feet tapping with the distinct beat. The trio of students finished up and the class gave enthusiastic applause, as did Zeets.

"That was great, guys! Excellent work. Your rhythm is getting much better, and did I hear an improv in the middle there with your solo?" The guitarist nodded, blushing, and ran his hand through his bleached-blond hair. "I thought so. It was good, but watch your fingerwork, the only way I knew it wasn't part of the score was the change in key there for a bar or two."

The sophmore student nodded again, and he and his friends (one on a drum kit and the other with a bass guitar) gathered their stuff. Zeets stood before the class and smiled. "Even though this is the Electronic Music class, I'd also like to remind everyone before the--" the class bell rang "too late, the class is up, that this weekend there's the Air Guitar finals in the auditorium. Have fun mocking the guitar-less kids, but don't let it get out of hand, I teach them too." She winked, and the class dispersed.

Because she was the instructor of said air guitar class, she wasn't allowed to judge the competition. That suited her just fine, because she'd rather just sit and watch any day. She'd gotten her start air guitaring - air liberation-ing - and when she and the guys took off on their road trip some amazing aliens put an instrument in her hands and she never looked back.

Zeets' life was about sound. The experience of it, the thrill of it, the way it made you feel, the way it brought people together. Not surprisingly, her Party Planning class which she was walking toward (it was outside, today - next week, who knows where it would be) was generally geared to attracting the right crowd with the right music, how to hire a DJ that knew what the party needed, and the like.

So it went, with the last class being that selfsame Air Guitar group, until her day ended. Zeets led an essentially charmed life. As a teen on another Earth, she was blissfully stoned most of the time, but aware enough to have been in advanced classes at school. She and her friends Ted and Tim were inseperable, they were a year younger than she was, referred to as "Zeta and Her Sophomores".

Tim and Ted had gone around to their own habits and lives, both married and Tim with kids, but every few months they took a road trip. Last time they managed to hop over the puddle and go to Europe. The year before that, it was Ursa Minor Beta to crash the Hitch Hiker's offices. She wasn't sure where they would be going this time, but as per usual she'd be at the wheel. She'd landed this gig at Carramba purely by accident, having learned that they were in need of some more "modern" music instruction. She'd come around to party but stayed for the Electronic Music, and then the Instrumental Music class which the adorably cute pony Penbardd needed to ditch in order to dedicate more time to her other music and environmental classes... Adding the Party Planning was something she was approached to do, they were always looking for people to host those.

Because she had a resonable salary, and did DJ jobs on the side, Zeets afforded herself a nice two-bedroom house nearby. The Winnebago was parked in the dirt lot beside it, along with numerous other neighborhood cars on the cul-de-sac since it was harder to get good parking on a curved curb. Apparently that house had burnt down, years before, it was a dirt lot as long as Zeets had been here, and no one in the neighborhood had tried to put up anything but a car lot.

Whenever she went to concerts (which was frequently) she took the Winne out and hosted barbeques or whatnot in the parking lot. Heck, she'd hosted the bands sometimes, some of them knew her from her travels - in and out of this world.

It was one of those bands who came to her, almost at random - but lucky her, when they were throwing darts at potential concert locations her image came up...

Coelestaad and her brother Arick dove at their friend, with far too many hands to go around. The blue aliens' arms split at the elbows and provided the universe with extra pairs of drumming hands. "Doooood!"

"Duuuuuude!" Zeets squealed, "how have you guys been?"

"We've been totally cool," Arick said. It wasn't an exaggeration either, they had been out past the Rim Nebula and done some ice fishing as well as a concert for the locals there.

"We found something you ... heyyyyyy, wait a minute, you guys already have dragons here!" Coelestaad looked over Zeets' shoulder and up into the air, where a trio of local law enforcement dragons and their riders were doing a routine patrol.

"Well, yeah,... oh," Zeets said, catching on. "Your dimension didn't have them yet?"

"How is it you always seem to know these things before anyone else?" Said Ija-Djon, the feline keyboardist and one of the Galactirock's crew.

"Hey, I had nothing to do with the dragons showing up," Zeets laughed and hugged her friends again. "So ... you're here to what, bring me to some dragons? Because I'd love that."

"Then you're going to love it," Ija said.

"Okay, well... hold up because I need to put in for some time off from work."

Arick could be heard making a pffffft noise, "work, what's work?"

"It's that thing I do when I need to put pizza on the table for you guys, and gas up the Winnie," Zeets shouted from another room. The three aliens were joined by three more, and one human girl. By the time Zeets had called up the administration office at Carramba and made arrangements for time-porting when needed (so she wasn't going to actually miss any teaching duties, she'd be going back in time to attend them when she could make up for it later), the Galactirock folks had made themselves absolutely comfortable on her living room floor, couch, and kitchen.

"Just like old times!" Zeets cheerily said, and plopped down between Brantian and the new girl, Lareen. "Haven't seen you before, they're grabbing Earthies now?"

The mood changed a little, as Ija and Lareen explained the situation with Vocorr and her Earth. "And," Ija said, sadly, "they're coming here too."

"Ohmygod, you're... oh man - you're right, I did see one of those uniforms. They're like... the only good thing about those guys, they got the fashion right. And they're here on Twoarth for real now?"

Morrel nodded, his air sacs wobbly. "Not in force, they still haven't mastered moving between the dimensions yet. I expect they will, sooner or later."

"Well, they should expect a lot of trouble from this dimension, that's for sure. Heck this whole place I know of runs on sound instead of light. Maybe you should tap into that..."

They chatted about ways to subvert the Vocorr, their pizza arrived, and they then discussed where best to head next for the purpose of padding their revolution with dragons.

"Hey, let her drive," Coelestaad said, as they got back onto their ship, which had been parked in that same dirt lot where the Winnie was. "She always knows where to go."

It was true, there was a reason why Ted and Tim let her drive after all. So they sat Zeets down at the bridge's nav controls, and let her go to it. While Zeets wasn't necessarily a gifted pilot in other respects, she did simply let her fingers do the walking so to speak. That, and it was highly likely that her own unconscious genre-hopping ability powered up every time she got behind the wheel.

The little Firefly class ship lurched into the sky (little? it was the length of two busses!) and exited the atmosphere without issue. Then, vanished from their dimension without even entering hyperspace. Of course, they did take some odd detours, such as the little rest stop where Sideshow met up with an old friend who was having ship trouble, and the less brief stop at Decrestinin the Mountain Planet where they enjoyed the wobble of the world (since it was dominated on one side by a mountain so big it could have simply been a fused moon) and some drinks.

Finally though, they ended up in a place off the nav maps, in fact off any maps. "Is this place even inhabited?" Brantian asked, peering over his beak. "It looks ... kind of secluded."

"It's gorgeous," Lareen said, "ooh look at the sky! Look at the stars!"

They'd landed at night, and even through the bridge's angled windows, they could see the rainbow-shimmer of stars, bright and clear.

"It's nowhere I've ever been," Morrel said, and he'd been a lot of places, his memory for star patterns was unsurpassed by this crew.

"Well let's get out and see what's up. There's a reason we're here after all," Ija said, packing a small bag with potential trade goods and security measures just in case.

***

"It's called Starfall," Ija said, "and oh look, there's its caretaker - she's spoken to me since I'm also telepathic," Ija winked. "I've told her why you're here."

"Me, just me?" Zeets said, tilting her head. "What about the rest of you?"

"Perhaps," Ija said, "perhaps. But right now, she says there's only a small number of eggs available to potentially bond, so... It was your guidance that led us here, it's for you to find your dragon."

Zeets gulped, this would be ... well, a true milestone in her life. She'd had a couple big events in the past, like their first road trip that led them off of Earth and onto another Earth, like finding Carramba... It would change everything. That was okay - she'd come here for a reason, like Ija said. There would be no turning back now!

She was led down to the secret hatching sands, noting the lovely colors on the eggs. The pearlescent one attracted her attention first and last. Though her eyes and fingers drifted over to the pretty blue one, and the fire-mottled red and orange one in turns, it was that pearly colored one which Zeets dwelled upon the most. It gave her a warm, happy feeling to touch it.

She glanced up at the caretaker, Ariana.

That one smiled, nodded, and said, "It's yours, the bond has already been made."

Zeets' stomach wiggled a little, butterflies like her first kiss. She gently took the egg which was small and warm, tucked it into a small pouch which Ija had thoughtfully brought with her, and bid the place farewell. Obviously that Ariana person was confident that this would work out, Zeets felt the love actually coming from the egg as they went back to the G'rock and headed home.

***

It had only been two days, Zeets went back to her classes and taught - distractedly - and attended the Air Guitar competition... But even by the end of that, she physically felt the egg which she kept close by her side (just in case) start to move more in earnest.

The Galactirock people were still staying at her home, just in case they needed her to find them their own dragon's locations (Ija was of the opinion that this would work just fine, at any rate, and Zeets was cool with it). So when she got home in the early afternoon on Saturday... placed the delicate and lovely egg on a cat-bed which the cat never wanted to use (it just figured, she liked the plastic wrap it came in, but not the sheepskin bed!), and waited for it to hatch.

A thin mucus covered the hatchling, but it wasn't quite like a baby bird - this was a dragon with hide, not sticky feathers. He was a purple shade, with yellowy-green wing sails, and the barest hint at a blue moptop of hair.

"He's adorable!" Lareen whispered, everyone wanted to get a look, but the hatchling only wanted one of them near.

"zzzzz! Pppppppfff! mmine! Mine!" He said, and Zeets breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't said mama or something... She would probably never be ready for that. The hatchling wagged his wings, drying them off but in the process knocking himself head over butt onto the soft bed. Not so soft... Zeets pulled a piece of the shell he'd come from out from under his tail. She gathered the rest of the shell bits, they were mostly large, the shell was just smaller than a softball. She decided she'd clean it up and do some art with it. It was still very pretty.

"Not as pretty as my little man, huh?" She said, to the dragonet after she'd washed off the shell. That little 'man' shook his head and almost fell over again. "You're such a klutz," she chuckled.

"Not!" He said, boldly raising his legs and walking - directly off the couch and onto the carpeted floor.

Chakoka was his name, and he was an absolute hit at Carramba. Everyone loved little dragons, everyone loved big dragons. He sat with his bond in her classroom, demanding his bed be brought with because he did tend to lounge around a lot. At first she was worried that his hearing would be damaged by some of the classes, but he never seemed fazed by it in the slightest.

The Galactirock folks took off and came back frequently, they were essentially going between Lareen's world and Twoarth in order to help smuggle Vocorr targets out of their bad situation. They'd get their own dragons, in time. In time.

***

Chakoka grew almost at the same pace as the children at the school, and enjoyed a spot in an all-dragon 'orchestra' (the less said about that the better - not because they were bad, but because they were loud and if anyone even mentioned them they would go off on their barbershop-quartet routine). It was never in question that this violet shaded boy would be a master of sound magic, but he did try his paws at other types... to greater or lesser success.

He also tried this 'dating' thing, there were numerous other dragons around campus. Whether he'd snag a permanent mate or just a brief fling, one thing he did know was that he would have to be able to fly well, pose dramatically, and look his best for those females. It never occurred to Zeets to be awkward about the whole male-dragon female-bond thing, she kept an open mind and hoped whoever her little rock star brought home would be okay too.

***

Chakoka had practiced diligently. Now he had something to show her, and led his human to a spot which he'd chosen in advance. The concert would be awesome, the young-adult dragons and their bonds or friends had kept the location a secret until now. Out in the desert, where a canyon formed a beautiful natural amphitheater. There, no urban complaints would arise. There, the very stars might shake.

Shake they did. Chakoka and the others performed a symphony of sorts, each of them giving voice to their special sonic talents. Some could thrum in deepest subsonic frequencies, while others shot out multiple notes at once. Chakoka lent his voice to the middle-range, having become quite smooth after his adolescence. But he also contributed his compositional talent to this concert: it was his idea, his vision, that led to this marvelous moment in the desert. Under the stars, hundreds of visitors wept with the emotion that was carried in the wordless music.

It had told a tale, that was obvious even to those who had never bonded a dragon or felt one's mind touch theirs. From the quiet life-before-life within the egg, the shattering, moments of innocence and playfulness, a rousing section of learning to fly (everyone knew that's what it was), and the bittersweetness of leaving the nest/home/comfortable life. All in all Chakoka lived up to his name, that day.