2:35 PM HOLLYWOOD - Talon City Overlook + Oak Street

"Is this your jacket?" Said a male voice, patient, but tired.

"I ain't neva' seen'no jacket. Ain't my *BEEP*n jacket."

"Well that's good," said a woman's voice, slightly annoyed, as she rustled through said jacket, "because if it was yours, we'd have to bust you for posession of crack cocaine."

"T'at ain't my jacket. Mofo took my coke an' I'm gettin it back."

The pair of police officers glanced at one another with that secret triumphant look.

"Well, since it *is* your coke, it looks like you're a winner after all." Said the man, "put your hands on the vehicle. Spread your legs-"

"Man I ain't spreadin' nothin' *BEEPBEEEEEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEP* of a *BEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEP*in *BEEP*hole."

"Resisting..." Ticked off the woman, "that's another two months, minimum. Go ahead, partner. Since this isn't his jacket, y'want to put on 'petty theft' as well?"

"What!?" Bellowed the perp, trying to crane his neck around to see what the woman was going to do with those cuffs. He should have been looking the other way, where the male officer was busy pulling out vial after vial of crack from dirty pockets along the guy's pants.

"If it is yours, you should just say so," the female officer said, "otherwise that's another charge we'll have you on. And it looks like your docket will be pretty full as it is. C'mon, what's another two months in the slam?"

"I ain't goin back there!" He screamed, suddenly putting some energy into his resistance. He pulled his arm away from the male officer, and began bolting down the street.

"Aw crud!" The man yelled, "stop!" But before he could pull down into a good running stance, his partner put her hand on his arm.

"Don't worry about him..." She said, gazing up into the air. "Remember that weird noise earlier?"

Angrily worked up, the man said, "yeah, I remember. Is it gonna catch that jerk?"

"Nope, but that thing might." She replied.

Abby Red and Norman Katz stood in awe for half a moment, as a dragon soared over Hollywood.

"Didn't see that," Norman said.

"I did. Look, it's heading that way." Abby said, getting into the squad car.

"You aren't going to - you are. Abby!" Norman jumped into the passenger side, legs barely in the vehicle by the time Abby had gunned the engine. It was a good thing that Norman had already bagged the crack and other evidence, or else it would have spilled out all over the road behind them.

But it was a futile chase. The pair of cops couldn't keep up with a dragon - not only was it flying rather quickly, but it was going through the air over city streets that crossed each other in just the wrong ways. Abby thought about putting on the lights and siren, but that would really be embarrassing when they met up with their fellow officers later on.

***

6:12 PM HOLLYWOOD, somewhere darker, nastier and gloomy

Several other sets of flashing lights had already been turned off, but a trio of cars still had theirs on. The sound of the siren had faded, but the echoes of voices and static of the half dozen police radios spilled over the street.

On the north side of the street was a moderately nice apartment building. On the south, a liquor store. On the roof of the store, was a large, strange creature.

"Hollyweird," someone said.

"Hey Frank," Abby said, sidling up to him. "What's the scoop on this. Why is it standing there?"

"It looks like it's waiting for something." Frank replied. "And it keeps looking in that window up there."

"Ah - that's where the..." Said someone else, and then they suddenly shut up as a captain came onto the scene.

"Where the what, Pete?" She demanded sharply. Abby backed away, and tugged at Norm's elbow to follow her.

"Let's see what's up there," she whispered.

"You crazy? We don't have a warrant or any cause." Norman said. But his eyes too drifted up to the large dragon sitting on the store. It wasn't the same one they'd seen earlier. For some reason, neither of them could tell why they knew that.

They snuck around the squad cars, and then up into the lobby of the apartment building. It wasn't locked, not much security on this block. Normally, it wasn't a bad neighborhood.

Guesstimating which apartment door to knock at, Abby chose one which would overlook the street and rapped her knuckles against the wood.

"There's no one home," Norm stated. "I hope you don't want to break the door in or anything stupid like that."

"I don't have to do that," Abby said, "I've got these." She held up a small lock-picking key, and Norman sighed audibly.

"Do you have to keep that?"

"They're expensive. They're useful. I've unlocked the squad car so many times with them, I don't know why we even keep keys at all." Abby muttered while she jimmied the lock. It fell open, and they entered a darkened apartment. There was a light on in the bedroom.

Silently, so opposite of their training, they crept around the apartment largely to get a good view of the liquor store. There was no one in the room, but the window was open and suddenly they heard kind of crunching sound. The building shook.

"What the hell was that? It wasn't an earthquake, was it?" Norman said, hissing.

"Nope," Abby said. "An earthquake keeps going. That was... a landing." She turned and tried to see the dragon on the rooftop beyond, but it had gotten too dark.

When the pair of cops heard voices coming down the hall - such thin walls for these apartments - they both almost panicked. Abby decided that she'd handle things. Norman decided he'd just shut up and watch. They would be in so much trouble...

"Did you see it? It's not Diosth, but I can't tell who it is!" Said a guy, excited.

"But that means that there are other dragons here already!" Said a woman, almost disappointed in tone. "Hey-"

"We've been gone like half an hour and my apartment's been broken into?!" Yelled the guy, and above, from the roof of the apartment, there was a distinct bellow.

"Sorry, sir," Abby announced, standing with her hands on her hips and latched into her belt. "There has been a disturbance, as you can see."

"What are you doing in here? Is something missing?" Kimball went around glancing through his things - but he'd been gone almost two years, and he could hardly remember just where this knicknack or that script had been put.

"Nothing's missing," Norman announced. "But there seem to be some strange additions tonight." He thumbed at the bedroom window, and outside at the dragon.

The pair - actors on a soap opera that Abby once sat in on in the audience - glanced at each other with a bit of an odd expression.

"Maybe... you should see this, then." Grace said. She turned around, put her leather-strapped satchel down on Kimball's couch, and they left into the hall again. Abby and Norman had to follow quickly.

In the hallway, the actors explained in quiet, out-of-breath tones that they had been in the apartment not so long before, with another dragon sitting on the video-store outside. They'd left, been gone for two years, and had come back to maybe see about getting some starring roles in something with their ...

"Dragons..." Norman whispered. "My god - look at them. They're beautiful!" He stepped right up, unafraid. Abby watched him, having been almost positive he'd be tucking tail and running. He was like that with certain people anyway. Apparently, these dragons didn't really scare him.

They didn't really scare her either. But she wasn't about to go right up and stick her hands on their noses. What if they'd bite!

They heard the rustling wings of the other dragon, below, and a thick sound as it rose into the air. It hovered, blowing hard bits of detritus through the air over the four people. The red and cream Ryslen dragons made room on the roof - but they knew better than to think that this big brown would fit easily.

"You've come at an odd time," said the rider. He had a mop of white hair, and was very pale skinned. Almost vampiric, but that was common enough in Hollywood too. "It seems that this place has suddenly been opened to the Nexus."

"The Nexus, that's what we traveled through to get back here," Kimball told Norman. "Our dragons are from another planet, but we also went -"

"Excuse me," the white-haired rider said, and his dragon made a snuffling laughing sound. "But we should get going. You two - the cops?" They perked up and stood together. "You're going to love this."

"Can we take them?" Grace asked, "I mean, if your dragon instructs, we can follow him, right?"

"Yes, I had hoped to do that," the search rider said. "I'm Voren, this is Ummidvarth."

"I've never seen one of those, where's he from?" Asked Kimball.

Though it went over the heads of the two cops, Voren was happy to explain that his dragon was from an early clutch of a place called Talor Cliff. Grace seemed utterly in awe - and with good reason. All three dragons stared at Abby and Norman.

"What the hell is going on here?" Bellowed the Captain, as she exited the stairwell on the roof. "What is this! You don't have permission to bring this stuff out here and film-"

"We're not filming," announced Grace, with a grin.

"We're searching," Kimball added. "And maybe later we'll come back again. Have fun!"

"My bag!" Grace yelled, "why am I an idiot?"

"I'll... get it," suggested Abby. She ducked past her superior officer, as the woman fumed and stomped around. To her, the dragons might be very impressive toys - but nothing living could look like that! They were fantasy!

Norman waited, trying not to get cornered into talking to her. Finally, Abby snuck back around the captain and with a strange little whistle, hid behind the brown dragon.

Ummidvarth swung his long head over the captain, as she was yelling instructions to get the 'props' out of here and get proper permits.

He snorted a blast of warm breath over her, and she froze in place.

"Cap," said Norman as he awlked toward the cream colored Ryslen dragoness, "We're going to be away from the office for a bit. There's a kid running coke on Talon City Outlook, you might want to check our car for the evidence. We've gotta go."

"GO!?" She bellowed. About half the guys from the squad cars below had come up to see where the brown dragon had gone, and honestly most of them wanted to go with Red and Katz.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Asked Abby of Grace. The back of her red dragon was easy to hold on to, and she snugged herself up against the actress-turned-rider.

"We're going back to Ryslen," she said, "where these two came from. Ummidvarth told Zaltierth about another clutch. We've been busy, I hadn't even realized that there were eggs."

Not quite knowing what she meant, but nodding and smiling none the less, Abby glanced around at her partner and grinned widely.

"Hold on tightly," Kimball said, and he looked to be enjoying having a nice sturdy policeman like Norman Katz behind him. "We're going to fly now, you don't think that they'll start shooting, do you?"

"If they do," Norman said, "I'll start shooting back."

***

Their flight went quickly - dark and cold in the Nexus - and Ryslen was spread below. A beautiful carpet of greens and darks, a lake in a big volcanic crater.

"The sands are down there, but we'll be coming in on the landing flat," Voren announced - through the dragons and therefore through their riders. Both Abby and Norman got the idea that the dragons could think to one another - and their riders were privy to those thoughts.

Remarkably convienent.

While Kimball and Grace obviously thought that their dragons would be great for acting and stunt jobs, Abby and Norman separately got the idea that they'd be perfect for law enforcement too. Imagine, a fleet of police-dragons?!

When they landed, both Norman and Abby rushed to Voren and thanked him - after squealing to their escorts how fun it was.

A youngish woman with a serious but pretty face came walking by, and Voren gave her a polite bow. "Jeyann, our next pair of Earthlings."

"That little portal they've opened is becoming quite convienent," the woman muttered. "Now, let's see. You have weapons," she noticed and Abby turned to Norman.

"Should we get rid of them?" Norman asked.

"Oh no, no, but I assume that you're not going to use them on anyone here. If you do, I'm going to have to take action."

"We won't," Abby assured her. "We are the good guys, anyway."

"That's good to know," Jeyann said, guarded. "But anyway - come along. Let's get you on the boards, and you can take a look around. You are... what do you do? Military? Guards?"

"We're cops," Abby said, "po-lice."

Norman snorked a laugh whenever she said it that way.

"Enforcement agents," he added. "Officers of the peace."

"I get the idea," Jeyann said, laughing. "So, perhaps while you're here, you could continue to keep the peace. There is always something needing arbitration - and a good guard always seems to keep bad people away. And then," she said as they entered the top portion of the red sands, "there are the eggs."

In quiet awe, Abby and Norman stood looking at the glimmering orbs on the red sand. There were three beautiful dragons resting on the sand as well, a bright pink one, and a huge golden one, and another off to one side curled asleep. Their eggs poked above the sand in pale shades of mushroom or ivory, mottled with the light.

"And hopefully," Jeyann said as they scraped up their loose jaws from the floor, "you'll bond to one of the hatchlings that will come from the eggs there. If not at one nest, perhaps another. Kimball and Grace there," she tossed her head behind her at the direction they'd come from, "didn't bond together. Grace's red is just a little older than the cream. But I'm sure that if Voren has brought you here, you'll both bond eventually."

"He's really cute," Abby said.

"And I'm sure Kimball agrees with you," Jeyann chuckled. "He's a little old for you, dear. And he's not even from Earth."

"We'll find out about that, later, won't we?" Norman asked. "I mean, where we are? This isn't Earth. And how they spent years here and came back later the night they left? That's like science fiction."

"It is," Jeyann said. "And yes, you will. Right now, though, let's get you two set up in your barracks, and get some regular clothes on you. You can loosen up, you know." She poked Abby in the belly, Norm gave off another snorting laugh, and they headed into Ryslen.

Abby Red	Norman Katz
Dragon:	Dragon:
Sire	Sire
Dam	Dam
Hatched At	Hatched At