Dems deFachs

Male, age... um.... older. (Probably immortal.)

Resident of The End, though he was not born there (no one was, that we know of, that counts).

Job: detective, bodyguard, civil servant and freelance gumshoe. Security agent for Inc Blotch Insurance.

Dems is typically found hunched over a desktop and reading half a dozen things at once. Though he's clearly past his prime in appearance, he's still extremely tough and strong, has a number of very good decades left in him.

***

He'd been following Max around for more than a month, waiting for the young woman to slip up or do something incredibly stupid. However, he knew perfectly well she wasn't stupid. She was quite smart, especially if Mayhem had trained her. She was not prone to repeat herself, nor make a mistake more than once. The mistake that she'd made that allowed Dems to start up her trail again was now two months prior, and it'd been uphill work ever since to try and locate the girl.

But she wasn't alone. No, she actually had befriended a creature that could fly and teleport. Like she needed that! Max could shapeshift - more accurately she could adapt to her environment and blend in without attracting undue attention. It was a side effect: Max had swallowed a piece of a Pilon of all things, Dems realized that her history was tied directly in with Mars and kath's big fight a few years back. Any time he'd asked Mars about the girl, he all but went into convulsions and ran away. So Dems knew there was something going on with them.

Dems watched from a distance, as this white dragon and Max flew around. But there was something different about her... She was... fat? Not Max, the dragon. This bore investigation, didn't it.

It turned out that the creature was pregnant. Heavy with eggs, which apparently she deposited at a place called Ihalthi, for some major event or other. Dems considered that the dragoness probably just wanted to get in and out of there, and sure enough that's what happened. Dems sighed, he'd have to pick up their trail again.

But instead of jolting off with his own interdimensional device, he lingered here. Others were showing up, and ... there were dragon eggs. Plenty of them, it looked like. The older man walked sedately into the chambers, waited his turn, and then after a short while (short - a vacation, nearly a month) the eggs hatched. One by one, little damp winged creatures stumbled out of their shells... He was entranced. This was so outside his experience.

Imagine that, something that Dems deFachs hadn't done or seen?

Well I can imagine lots of things I haven't done or seen. You are going to help me see and do! Said a voice in Dems' head.

He looked around, "eh?"

Me, Ina-en. Well, I think my full name is Ina-En Uena'Aisi. It means something, but I'm not sure what it is. Come on, I'm hungry. Aren't you even going to help me get food? I mean, I'm going to help you find my mother, right? So it's only fair you help me get food.

"W...wait, wait just a moment here," Dems said, all but stamping his foot on the ground. "Listen here you little thing," he started to say, but Ina-en was looking up at him with those huge huge eyes, the fluffy mane she had wouldn't grow in for a while but her little snout was dotted with sand and a shell from her breaking it. The little glowy bits on her stubby head crest were a lovely lilac-pink color, though her hide was almost indistinguishable from the sand itself. "Oh, well, you've got a bit of shell here. I can help you get that off." He immediately turned all mom-type on her. "Well if you're that hungry let's go, but you're going to have to learn to find those things yourself. If you're going to be a detective's assistant that is."

Ina-en seemed to think this was a perfect plan. Someday, they'd run into Pearla-tiki, but for the time being, Dems wanted to show her off to his friends, and duly introduced her as his new assistant.

Ina-en had proven herself useful in and near The End, even as a tiny dragonet. She could light up a dark place with her glowing bits, cast light in a subtle shade that wouldn't alert too many people. Dems could sneak around with her, pretty well, when she was that small. It was when she started getting a little bigger, that they began looking for solutions to the dilemma of breaking and entering or just lounging around his house. She didn't want to be sent outside, and frankly, Dems didn't want her to have to be.

"I know some mages, who know some mages," Dems said, as he shuffled through his rolodex to locate a good spacial specialist. He found one, snapped his fingers and a Murian Message Bird appeared, took his hastily written note (come see me, not official, Dems) to the mage.

Within moments, there was a knock at Dems' door. No mage would simply pop into his home, or any home for that matter - especially not one whose specialty was security like Dems! Combat Mistress Lethe was good at what she did, but she never ever came into a place like this uninvited nor rudely breaking their wards. The mage smiled, she usually wore a smile like that, and shook Dems hand as he let her in. The house was a nice, fairly normal one-story ranch style, with a yard. That was it: it had a plane of existance all to itself. It had been made to his specs but the wizard or lawyer who'd made it for him had died a few years back, and Dems didn't know the right spells to expand it.

"Hey... is that a dragon?" Lethe said, peering into the bigger part of the house where Ina-en crouched. Lethe's face lit up. "I've got a dragon!"

"... Y-you what?" Dems said, somewhere between bright surprise and disappointment because he hadn't known all that many people who did.

"Yeah! I would have come with her if I'd known you found one! Hi!" She gleefully walked past Dems into the den, and Ina-en perked up. "Oh she's cute! Look at that!"

Dems was now starting to get a little embarrassed. He was after all a big, strong, surly type of guy who chomped an unlit cigar and donned a trenchcoat as part of his daily routine. To have a 'cute' dragon... yeah. That was manly.

"You know that Ravielath and Nilmarith are havin' babies? Well, you wouldn't know, would you, I haven't seen you since you found your dragon!" All the while, Lethe was doting upon the still-young Ina-en, who was actually rather dumbfounded at this behavior. She'd gotten used to being coo-cooed at when she was still little, but she was close to eight feet tall now, at the shoulder, and those things were for babies!

She didn't know that Lethe's dragon was a mostly-Pernese twilight-purple, and they came in rather larger sizes than Ina!

"Well, what did you want to talk about, Dems?" Lethe got down to business abruptly, perhaps sensing in the body language of the dragoness that she'd overstepped her boundaries. Combat mages like herself had to know and sense these things, to keep themselves alive.

"Ah, yes!" Dems said, straightening up and stepping down the two stairs into his den. "Well, she's growing! And I don't have much of a place for a big dragon, you're supposed to be good at personal space, right?"

Lethe nodded, her black and red hair still remaining perfectly angled on her head. "Let me see what I can do here. Do you have a stereo? Please?"

Dems' head tilted all by itself, some question to ask in the middle of a business deal.

"I use music to help me create spaces, if you have a piece of music you like a lot, something that makes you feel at home," she explained, "I can design something more appropriate to you."

Dems nodded, "I think I do," he said. He trundled off and picked a few pieces of jazz that he enjoyed, Gershwin and Bernstein, and put them in his player. With that, Lethe was off in her own world.

"I like those, too, good choice," she muttered and then began waving her hands in time with the music. Soon enough, the yard outside had transformed itself into a rather wide glade, with a rocky tumbling waterfall, part of a hill, and a tall grouping of trees that parasoled shade down onto a patch of short blue-grey grass. The interior of the house expanded on the den side, the full wall windows opened into a sort of greenhouse or atrium, ending in a wide archway and a curving dragon's quarters. It was huge, though, and Dems wondered at that.

"Well, I think there's enough space for her, and the one coming along." Lethe said. Then her eyes widened, "oh. Sorry, you haven't done that yet."

"You're not a time lord," Dems said, "what gives you some impression I'm gonna have two of these?" He thumbed toward Ina-en.

"I wouldn't mind having a companion, too," Ina-en said, tossing her head around and running toward the archway to test out her new digs. The tall structure was like a big wooden and glass wave, with comfortable pits that Lethe had magically decorated with cushions safe for dragons to rest on. There were actually three pits, just in case, but Lethe only admitted to knowing about one extra...

"Maybe that's something you should discuss. Oh hey, well," Lethe briefly cast her mind into an aether that many dragon riders used, and suddenly there was a purple-silver shaded dragoness with large curved wings and a tall crest winging her way down from the static-colored sky. "This is Ravielath! See, you can have visitors and not make their dragons sit outside in the cold." Lethe nodded happily, and the pair of youngling and experienced dragoness sniffed one another over. Ravi was three or four times the size of the glowing-bobbed dragon, but expressed that Ina-en would likely grow to at least her size.

The girltalk was going to be getting to Dems - he could hear parts of their conversation through his bond with Ina-en, and their grumbling chuckles and other noises might have been heard through the cosmos. In fact... very shortly, the seemed to have been heard.

After all, Dems' home was situated in a nook of Outside, the same space that the Healing Den, many Nexus dragonries, and several hyperspace lanes went through. And the Mistress of the Outside, Misota, had ... also bonded a dragon. Some time ago, apparently. She settled down next to the mage and the security officer, in his newly widened den, and they chatted up a storm. The girls, anyway.

Dantinath was a small silver dragon, of quite a different appearance from the other two, though just what Dems needed: another female. Misota had traveled through time and space and many different dimensions, before reaching the world where she was born into dragoning. She'd left it with Robin Time and Beena Catti, and gone back to her Outside duties. The dragoness fit right in with those, she was as silver as the sky.

But she also knew something that the others hadn't, where and when this mysterious other dragon would come from. And when Ina-en learned of it, she suddenly got excited.

"We need to go! I know where to find her!"

"Her?" Dems groaned, "another female?" But Ina-en wasn't to be deterred. Though she was young yet, she could fly adequately well, and was more than big enough to support the burly man on her back (or even carry him snugged to her chest, embracing him). With the assistance of the space mage and the Mistress of the Outside, their dragons and Dems got to another world...

Iolana was a busy place, what with all the hatchings going on. A couple people even knew one another from different worlds, Misota went off to talk to Jenie who'd just bonded a lovely spring-colored purple.

And it was hardly a few minutes into Dems being there, that a brightly (BRIGHTLY) spotted red, white and multibangled hatchling came bumbling toward him.

"I am Elora Uena'Aisi!" She chittered, "I've been waiting for you!"

Dems' eyebrow lifted all on its own, practically off his balding head. "Really now."

"Yes! Really! Now!"

About then, Ina-en jumped into the fray, "That's my neice! Look! All of them are my neices and nephews!" She seemed so very proud of them, "they'll be trouble for sure!"

"Yes, I believe they will be," Dems sighed. "Well your little Elora here can come home with us, but none of the others. And no more! Not yet!" He put his foot down, this time, and hastily apologized to Elora for stumping onto her tail!

Keep reading below!

Dems wasn't sure how things got this badly out of his control. He was being dragged hither and yon, to his dragons' hearts content... Though truth be told, both of them had turned out to be quite helpful in getting around the multiverse. Whenever Dems had been needed by his company or kath or whoever called, they could take him instantly. Of course, that was provided he was going to a location where there was space enough for a dragon to land or hang about.

One place that they decided to take him however was Clan Akelara again, more than once they'd stopped by the place and done whatever mysterious girl-dragon-things they wished to. For his part, Dems took those moments to read up on the latest goings-on at The End, or pen a letter to distant friends.

Dems reluctantly glanced around. Clan Akelara wasn't that bad of a place to be, it was just...

Well, Elora and Ina-en had this strange, giggling, secretive air about them. They knew something he didn't, and he wasn't enjoying this fact in the slightest.

Why did he feel like his world was about to crash down around his ears again?

His suspicions began to spiral as he noticed the kittens running around, apparently fleeing the control of adults. They were cute, but...

"Dems! Look!" Elora chirped as she swished her tail from side to side, laughing as several of the ungainly kittens made wide lunges for the 'toy' and flopped back to the ground, disgruntled. "Aren't they cute?"

"No. We're not taking one home!" Kittens. Winged kittens. It didn't matter how large Lethe had made his house, it wouldn't be large enough. Not for one, and definitely not for multiple ones!

"But they're so cute!" Ina-en chirruped, playing with her own set of kittens.

"I don't care, I-- ack!"

Tiny pinpricks advanced up his back as he was used as a 'tree' by a previously unnoticed kitten, the scamp settling on his shoulder and leaning over to grin in his face. It then proceeded to lick him with its sand-paper tongue, purring in self-satisfaction.

Ritaki thinks man silly. Ritaki will go where she will. Ina-en say silly man have nice house -- Ritaki will go with.

"But.. you.. I.."

Ritaki flicked her tongue over Dems's face a second time, Ritaki win, silly man lose. Ritaki go to new home now, yes?

Dems sighed in defeat, "Fine, fine..."

***

It didn't take too long before Ritaki was large enough to look Dems in the eye and lick his nose while still having all four paws on the floor. The trick of climbing on him was nixed fairly early - his back wasn't what it used to be, so holding on to an ever-growing winged kitten wasn't going to work for long.

Ritaki was slightly disappointed in that, but then she'd been finding all manner of other things to get into at his home.

She was in the flower beds. She was over the roof, heard as a series of soft groans of the magical wood that the place was made from as she passed overhead. She was in the attic (stuck in the opening between the roof and the wall, of course). She'd found a nice spot curled under one of the shade trees in the back.

And underfoot... Constantly. Ina-en and Elora apparently were coaching her on these stunts, but they were also very protective of her - and Dems. When they started bringing Ritaki along on their journeys, Ritaki got to see first hand how well the adults behaved when Dems was being hired on as a bodyguard for some famous person or other.

With her striking markings, Ritaki knew that soon enough she'd be the one in the front, holding her wings in a display. She practiced at home... She also was still small enough to slink around the inside of the house. Perhaps she would always be around the right size to do so, but Dems eventually had to scold her for wiping out one of the tables that she loved to sit on as a youngster.

***

At last, this beautifully marked and utterly graceful creature got to go with Dems alone, while the other girls were chatting it up with Misota and her dragon. There was a ruckus at The End, it was Carnival season and there were many tourists from a multitude of dimensions. Any time you had that many people of different cultures in one place, there was bound to be trouble.

Though Ritaki wasn't nearly as large as her glowing 'sisters', she was fierce, and big enough for Dems to mount up. Rather like the sheriff coming back to a bar after another fight, Dems showed up on The End's Inc Blotch building, surveyed the scene (it wasn't a riot, so much as a food fight that had erupted between two of the snack vendors), and had Ritaki drop down in the middle of the dirt area.

"Woah woah woah," he said, swinging his leg over her neck (as over the shoulder would mean hitting her wing) and depositing himself dustily on the ground. "We can't have this here, this is a carnival, not a brawl."

Ritaki flared her violet wings, and made overly dramatic hissing noises. While it certainly served well to stop the warring 'rat onna stick - versus - inflato-squid' event, it was only moments before half a hundred kids and their worried parents were up near them asking feverishly if they could pet/ride/take home this lovely dragon.

Ritaki loved it. Dems not so much.

But in the end, Ritaki was the one who mattered most... Even to Dems.