I had just started school, and had made two friends. I still remember our first meeting, my first friends and I. It was the second or third day of school, on the morning bus ride.

I was finishing up some homework, having conveniently forgotten about it last night, and darius, as usual, was acting like a fool. He overheard some kids behind us talking about some secret or other and he stood up on the seat to see who. "I've got a secret!" he said. Well, more like shouted. Before he could divulge the "secret" that me and my siblings had naeon as a breath weapon, I cut him off. "Darius! Dad said not to talk about that!" He countered with "It's a cool secret! Angeline would say it!" She replied "No I would not!" Typical conversation between us. I finished my homework, put it away, and engaged in life. As usual, angeline was staring misty-eyed at Ralf, which she did when she thought no one was looking. Darius was talking to the kids behind us, and I decided to see what was going on.

There were two kids in the seat immediately behind us, a boy and a girl. I started talking with them myself, and got to know them a little. The boy was Tom Whitman. He was an amphibian, blue, with gold tipped wings. He had a frill somewhat like mine, only without spines and it was more prominent at his head. He liked Sargasso, and played the drums like my uncle Pik. His mother was the bus driver, and he had to stay on the bus until all the other kids were dropped off.

The girl sitting next to him was Ingrid Brik. Now boys at age six act a little queer, not wanting to have much to do with girls until puberty hits. But something about her struck an odd chord on my senses from the first moment I saw her. I knew her parents, since our father worked with them when he did bodyguard duty for Sargasso, and they had occasionally come to visit us. she was a dark forest green, and looked very much like a mountain dragon. She was very cute overall, even for a six-year-old male.

As kids love to do, we started to play around, and ended up in breaking the rules, but we did our best not to get caught. Darius discharged a bolt of electricity at Tom's mother, and she yelped and jumped. We all put on a straight face as she turned around. There was no real way she was going to suspect me and my siblings. We look NOTHING like electrics. Anyone who didn't know us would say we were tetrapoides to the letter, albeit with some rather unique features.

Well I feel a little stupid. I didn't even describe myself, or my siblings. We all look a lot like our father, black scales, silver plates, although Angeline didn't have plates, she had silver where they would be. We all had glowing red eyes like our father did, and that freaked some people out at first. They didn't give off much light, but you could see it if it was very dark. We all had spines like our father, but had sting glands, which our father did not. They didn't help us much, since they didn't have a strong enough poison to hurt anything other than make a cut or a stab sting something horribly. The blades themselves were much more dangerous, curved, sharp on the inside, and at the time were about a foot long. we were very much like our father, and you could only tell that our mother was our mother because we looked like her in the face. Angeline was the only one out of the three of us who had hair. It was the same golden-blond that

our mother's was.

Well, Darius was going to shock Tom's mother again, but I suppressed it. But, Ingrid was a shapechanger like her father, and she became electric without looking it, and shocked Tom's mother as well. But since she was unskilled in the use of electricity, Tom's mother turned around and looked right at her. She gave her one of her famous "I'm going to eat you" smiles, and left things at that.

School never was very interesting at the beginning of the year for me. All the teachers have to get to know your names, your faces, likes and dislikes, and the organization and orientation get annoying. Some souless sadist had decided to put the three of us together in all of our classes, so none of us got away with ANYTHING that year. We had two classes with Ingrid, and one with Tom. But we didn't have any classes with them both, other than lunch.

We all sat together at lunch, Ralf and his friends too, since they had the same lunch as us. We were all halfbreeds, and got teased because of it. That was Ralf's one weak point. He couldn't take the teasing. But my sister, good lord, she would immediately jump to his defense, and her scathing toungue would flay anyone who tried to tease Ralf. We stuck together, and that helped us get through all the teasing. Tom was pretty good at shutting people down as well. Me, I didn't care, and Darien made friends so fast that if you gave him five minutes he could have everyone in the room on his side.

We made plans to meet over at Ingrid's house. There was no real issue from our parents, they had known Ingrid's parents long before me and my siblings h  hatched. Tom told his mother, and she okayed it. We got off at her stop, and walked up to Ingrid's house Gareth greeted us, with his near-perpetual smile. It disappeared as soon as he noticed Tom, however. He looked at him good and hard, then, apparently satisfied, smiled again and let us in. When we began to play we made a discovery, which for whatever reason, she hid from Tom. She said that her father had said that me and my siblings could know, but no one else. That would explain her earlier act in shocking the bus driver.

Ingrid's mother smiled and watched us as we played, holding her newborn child in her arms. Hana was a green wingless Risso's dragon, kind and loving, the kind of person who gives immeasurable, but often unnoticed by anyone that didn't know her, support, someone who would act as glue holding the family together. The baby was Ben. Ben had three-fingered hands, and like her sister, was a live birth and was born in anthro form, not animal form. I had always been curious as to why all of Gareth's kid were born in anthro form, and as to why Ben had only three fingers. I found out a possible answer to the first question later, but it wasn't until I was older.

The next day, I got up much earlier than I needed to, in order to spend some time with my mother. We talked for as long as possible, until she got an urgent call and had to leave immediatley, if not sooner. She apologized, but I just gave her a hug and said it was okay, that we'd talk tomorrow. She briefely kissed my father, and she was off, changing into animal form even before she was completely out the door. Her tail caressed my father on the way out, and he sighed after she left. I really felt for my father at times like this. He spent only marginally more time with his wife as we did. If it wasn't for the fact that they loved each other more than anyone else other than their children, it probably would not have worked out between them.

On the bus, Tom's mother gave Ingrid another "I'm going to eat you" smiles, and called someone on her cellphone. As soon as she hung up, we heard a gunshot.