Chapter Text
They say blood is thicker than water.
But whoever "they" is left out half the phrase.
The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. The people you choose to share your life with are more important than the people forced into it by the universe's sick sense of humor.
Anyways, Tommy's getting shot at, so maybe he should move on from the philosophical shit and focus.
He's running across rooftops, keeping his wings pressed close to his back to avoid them getting clipped by bullets.
This is way harder than TV makes it look. Building routes are generally not just straight lines where you can just hop over a gap and keep running. You gotta climb shit and worry about drops, and then sometimes something that looks like a path isn't actually usable.
Also, there's shit like broken glass that gets stuck in your foot and god DAMN that hurts.
There are still shots coming from behind him, but the miniscule head start he managed to build is gone .
He makes a tactical retreat to the center of the building, wrapping his wings around himself as tightly as he can.
They're not very pretty.
They're skeletal, with leathery membranes stretching between the long fingers, all sharp edges and cold scales.
That's not to mention the scar tissue wrapping around them, or how they're barely big enough to glide, let alone fly with all the loops and twists that he's seen some avians capable of.
Tommy doesn't know what he is. He's never seen another hybrid like himself, with leathery wings and clawed feet and horns just budding out of his hair. But he likes to imagine them sometimes, a family for himself, a mother and father and brothers and sisters, with aunts and uncles and cousins.
This isn't a good time to think about them.
He can hear the gunmen loudly making their way up the fire escape. He can't move, his limbs are completely frozen with fear, and even if they weren't he's boxed in. Two other buildings on the left and behind him, to the right and in front there's wide roads, and taller buildings beyond them.
He's trapped.
A tiny chirp makes its way out of his mouth, but it goes unanswered, like all the others do.
The gunmen make it onto the roof.
Another chirp.
He is alone.
He can see one of them line up a shot from the corner of his eye. He squeezes them shut, but he can't move.
It'll be quicker if they can make a clean shot.
He hears the gunman racking the slide, and his feet moving on the gravel as he readies a stance.
Then loud rustling of the wind and a cut-off screech as something impacts and pushes the one man off the roof, followed by one, two, three more as the others follow their leader.
Tommy still can't move.
His muscles stay locked as whatever pushed the men off starts making it's way around, bipedal, but with something heavy dragging behind, shifting the rocks as it walks. It's slow, easy for Tommy to track without looking, and it eventually comes to a stop in front of him.
Tommy looks up, and his wide purple eyes meet bright sky blue.
-_*_-
Philza Minecraft was actually enjoying a day off, for once. He'd had lunch with his sons, called his grandson, and was flying down to visit Kristin's grave.
Then he almost got a wing clipped by a bullet, and he couldn't just leave that alone, could he?
He flew over a high-rise, and stopped, peering over the edge to get a better idea of what was happening.
There was a little dragonet running over the rooftops of downtown Manberg, being chased by four men in dark clothes and too much combat gear.
Yeah, Phil was getting involved in this wasn't he?
He followed for a moment longer, watching the baby dragon make their way over buildings and making harsh turns and course corrections with almost no help from their wings, instead keeping them pressed tightly to their back and pulling themselves up and over obstacles with their claws on their hands and feet.
Phil couldn't see any obvious injuries, but not all injuries had to be obvious. We're their wings hurt? That would explain why they weren't using them.
Then the dragonet ran into a dead end, almost falling off the side of the building, before retreating to the center, the most defensible position, and staying there.
There were so many odd things about this situation, but Phil didn't have time to focus on any of them. The gunmen were making their way up the fire escape, and the dragonet wasn't moving.
Phil watched as they got onto the rooftop, all of them watching their target carefully, and then readied their stances.
The leader cocked his gun, and Phil dove into action.
He quickly dove down, grabbing the man's gun and pushing him off the roof, before quickly doing the same to his fellows and activating the police alert he kept on his belt. He would stay in the area until the men were arrested. It would give him time to figure out why they were chasing a dragon through the bustle of downtown.
He made his way around, keeping his steps deliberate and not going any closer to the young-looking dragon. Though now that he got a proper look, dragonet was definitely the wrong word.
This was a Hatchling .
Now, Phil wasn't a Dragon, he was an avian, an Elytrian, who's race didn't have much of anything to do at all with Dragons.
But his wife was a Dragon, and she taught him a lot about dragon culture. Especially when it came to family structure and child-rearing.
Children did not leave their parents' hoard. Not until they were old enough to basically live on their own, to provide and hunt and exist without need for guidance from their parents. Those policies had certainly relaxed quite a bit since the End Plane started mingling more with the Mortal one, but hatchlings were never out of their parents' sight. It caused immense amounts of stress for both parties, and could lead to issues in the baby's emotional and social development.
This was a baby dragon, alone, being chased through the city, and with no parent in sight.
He hesitantly leaned forward, his wings raising up in an unconscious mirroring of the way Kirsten's did whenever Wilbur was particularly afraid of something. She'd said it was a way to show that you meant no harm, that you were there to help, to protect, to keep them safe.
The Hatchling looked up, body still stiff and wings still wrapped around them as a feeble protection, and Phil's breath froze in his chest.
Because for a moment, he saw the boy's eyes, and for a moment…
He thought they were Kristin's.