Character	Jerry Woods AKA "Point"
Gender/Orientation	Male, faintly bisexual (would experiment)
Type	Trying to Awaken, still Plugged in at start
Apparent Age	16
Dragon	Platinum Silver Male Taludir

Point was given the same training as the other Awakened that called Dragonchaser their temporary home. There were many things they needed to run through - how to deal with Agents, how to treat the hatching when they were there. How to treat the Agents, at the Hatching.

"I thought Agents wouldn't be at Vere," Point admitted to Derfie. She shrugged, and punched in another command before smiling at him and plugging his jack into their simulator.

"Sorry, Point, but they're everywhere." She said with a little sigh.

She'd never really even seen one, Point realized as he went through the exersize. He wasn't the most acrobatic of people, he knew that when he was in a group situation. There were others who were far better prepared for this than he was.

It had occurred to him that.... If he paired up with a dragon, why couldn't he just stay in Vere with it? Couldn't they plug him back in there? In that version's power plant?

That would be way too much to ask.

If .... but what if he could contact Charybdis? He knew, she told him not to look for her. Fine. Right. Whatever.

He would draw dragons, he would draw people. He would also draw her, sometimes. But he also found himself drawing Durfegurtz. She spent a lot more time with him than with the other Awakened they'd picked up at assorted times. He enjoyed talking to her because she was curious about life in the Matrix, and he was curious about life everywhere else.

They ... complimented each other? Was he ever going to grow the courage needed to ask her if ... well, that would have to wait. Plus, it was, he was told, always dangerous to get too attached if you were on a ship like this one. People had a nasty tendancy to be killed on runs, he was told.

He was told to get used to being told what to do and think. Which was something he really couldn't stand.

"How do you do it, Derf?" He asked her one night, shortly before their Hatching run.

"Do what?" She said, a bit confused.

"Take orders all the time? I mean, Yana's pretty cool and everything, but don't you get tired of it? Why not just stay at Zion?"

Derfegurtz stiffened a bit, and then adopted a pondering pose. Point loved to watch her face while she thought. Subtle emotions went over her lips and eyes.

"It's what we do, Point," she finally stated. "I know that's not much of an answer, but someone has to do it. We don't have the room to have a whole batch of people in here, so I wind up doing the grunt work. It's good work, too, you know. It's not like there aren't rewards." She smiled at him, which was reward enough for him tonight.

***

At Vere's hatching, there .... was a bit of excitement on the way. But for the moment, Point and the others were allowed to wander into the stadium where the hatching was held. They didn't exactly blend in, but they weren't the weirdest or wildest people that the locals had ever seen. And there were so many people, anyway.

But what would be the stunning thing, was when the hatching started, and the eggs broke... The hatchlings that they knew would be connected to their pods, the ones being freed, they were different. Everyone's stunned muttering and staring at the first to hatch and open its beautiful wings knew something was different this time.

The wings would give them all away. Point realized that right off. It was a distinction that drew unwanted attention to them. The normal dragons were beautiful enough - smooth almost like poured metals in the sky. But the wings... There was code on them, he saw that. Others saw but didn't know what to think. That was good. If they did know, they would likely either be scared witless, or ...

When the first of those same hatchlings vanished before everyone's eyes, when it was unplugged from its pod? Point knew now, that when he'd escaped from the Matrix, his body just vanished. There would be no funeral for him there - not like that other guy claimed. He was no longer jacked in at all - meaning that his whole presense was gone.

"Wow," he said quietly. That was lost on the crowd when another pair of dragonets vanished. The thing was, and the thing that bothered Point about it all, was that while the dragonets were gone, their partner wasn't. And they stood there, like morons, looking like they didn't have a care in the world.

If he played it up like he knew he ought, he'd still look like an idiot anyway. If he paired up.

Outside Vere, there were things going on that Point knew nothing about. In Vere, yet another hatchling was about to choose.

The shining silvery dragon had stumbled from his shell shortly after the two solid-colors, but had stood and looked over the apprehensive candidates for long, dreamy moments before moving. At first he’d seemed to be a silver, and then a platinum, catching light both softly and harshly as he moved. Coming closer, the youngling was revealed to be mostly brilliant platinum, but with points of the finest, softest silver.

He moved liquidly, with a particular consciousness about him that most of his siblings had not possessed, and when he stepped towards the candidates he knew well where he was going.

The shining young male stopped in front of Point, and looked up. You’ve got pretty images in your mind.

“Thank you,” was all the nervous young artist could manage. “Ahh… um, what’s your name? I’m Point.”

My given name is Taludir, the silver-platinum introduced, giving a draconic smile. And now… He trailed off, looking into Point’s eyes, then disappeared.

Point's hands shook. He wouldn't be able to hold a pen in his hand, at this rate. He had bonded. To a beautiful male, the color of molten chrome... His training tried to kick in, and then it had to.

There were Agents on the way.

Cel showed up - so they were watching from the ship like they said. She scattered parts of the crowd, where the Agents fired upon her. She wasn't injured. She wasn't injured. That was the routine that Point was taught to believe. He knew that the Matrix, either of them, were not real. So bullets or falls or whatever... They couldn't really hurt him.

They could scare the shit out of him. And they were doing that now.

Cel landed to take the rest out of Vere, those who had already claimed a dragon bond. Point went with the wide eyed excitement that apparently he'd been come to be known by.

Unplugged again, shortly after being removed by the dragoness, Point wondered what the hurry was with the one woman, Phoenix. It turned out that she wanted nothing more than to help get her own dragon out of its pod. That would be ... messy.

In fact it was, and Point was drained to exhaustion already from the whole event. He hoped that his dragon, Taludir he repeated his name over and over, was okay. The ship spent many long minutes zigzagging through the pod fields where the dragons were also plugged into the Vere matrix.

Were they the same brilliant colors? What about their wings?

It didn't matter. Or at least, it wouldn't shortly. Because there were sentinels on the way, just like the others still in Vere were surrounded by Agents.

Point felt helpless.

The fact that he could really do nothing but help scrape the goo from the newly released hatchlings, was a minor bonus. But the ship was being flung around so hard...

And then they teleported.

The whole ship. The two dragons, clasping onto it with their strong legs... Took the Dragonchaser back to Zion. They made it.

They made it. With their hatchlings. And... even though they had to escape, they would have to go back. Because they'd found out that someone had managed to pair up with one that wasn't released. Weird.

But so satisfying. Point knew Taludir when he saw him. Pale colored, in fact he looked like he'd always be pale. He was silver and platinum in Vere, after all. Now they would rest.

It was all they could think of doing, Point and Taludir...