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Everyone expects Alpha to settle as something big and tough. A wolf or a cougar or a bear. Something that shows it means business. Something imposing that could take out a threat at a moment’s notice. And it isn’t like Alpha dislikes being big and tough and scary. She likes being a wolfdog most of all, pressing against Adam’s knees from behind and snarling her displeasure at things. But it’s not all there is to her.
Everyone expects Theia to settle as something light and quick. A hummingbird or a mouse or a cheetah. Something that can change on a dime. Something that can move as fast as Bree does, or close enough to count. And it isn’t like Theia dislikes being quick. She likes being able to keep up with Bree, knowing that she’ll never be left behind. But it’s not all there is to her.
Everyone expects Quark to settle as something clever. A ferret or a raccoon or, even rarer, some sort of primate. Something that can think through a problem. Something that can keep a good head on its shoulders. And it isn’t that Quark dislikes being smart. She’s always smart no matter what form she takes, just like Chase is. But it’s not all there is to her.
Well. Maybe it isn’t accurate to say everyone, because really, the only people who expect that from them are Adam, Bree, and Chase themselves. And Leo, maybe. And Tasha, probably. But that’s it. Because Mr. Davenport is weird about settling. Really, really weird.
Tasha isn’t. She and Cirrus talk about it freely with all of the kids. Adam and Alpha, Bree and Theia, Chase and Quark, Leo and Silvius. It’s nice, because any time Mr. Davenport talks about it, it’s just to say that he’s working on a way for them to never have to do it. Erwin isn’t much better.
He says it’s because settling would be dangerous. What if they have to spend time underwater, but someone can’t shift into something that can swim? What if they need Alpha’s strength to help Adam break down a door, but she can’t become something adequate? What if Bree outpaces Theia? They can’t go too far from each other. It’s just too dangerous to allow the opportunity. They’re special kids. Their daemons have to be special, too.
Privately, Leo tells them they don’t have to worry about it as much as he says they do. They’ll be alright. He used to be terrified of settling before his mom told him what it was really like-something similar to finding a best friend you didn’t realize was right there beside you the whole time. He says he’s excited for Silvius to settle. He speculates about it all the time. Chipmunk like Cirrus, maybe, or a ferret like Erwin, or (hopefully) something else entirely.
Adam can get into it. The thrill of wondering out loud with his family about what could happen. Chase always brings him back down to Earth, telling him that if they don’t find a way to make it so they never have to settle, they’ll need to settle as something that compliments their powers. Everything else be damned.
Tasha can say that’s not how it works all she likes. They aren’t normal. They don’t get to have normal daemons like her. So what if it’s not how it works? Mr. Davenport will make it how it works. He always does.
Still, though. Late at night when he’s alone... he wonders. They all do. How could they not?
Bree wonders the most, something that might surprise her brothers. Settling is normal. She’d kill for a chance to be normal. Theia can’t be left behind on a mission, but if she settled as something small, it wouldn’t even matter, right? She could just carry her. It would be fine. It would be fine!
Quark can usually tell when she’s wondering about it and will say something to snap her out of it, perched on top of Chase’s head as a Squirrel Monkey or a stoat. Theia calls her stuck up, and then Bree has to leave the room or else they’ll start bickering and no one will be able to stop them.
But while settling may have been the most difficult topic, it wasn’t the only one. Touching was also… a big deal.
When it had just been the three of them in the basement, they’d touched each other’s daemons all the time. It wasn’t a big deal, and it was generally inevitable. They’d touch Erwin, too, even though both he and Mr. Davenport got a little more squirrely about that than felt absolutely necessary.
And then they weren’t allowed to touch Cirrus or Silvius period or Erwin anymore. When they went to school they weren’t allowed to touch anyone’s daemons. That was easier, because there generally wasn’t any reason to. No one was cramming into one capsule to sleep, limbs and daemons all tangled up, inside the halls of high school. The only time anyone got close was when Fang jumped off the top of a row of lockers with his beard puffed up and blackened and startled Bree so badly she almost smacked him out of the air at sonic speeds before stopping herself.
Rumors still got sent around. People saying how odd it was that the Davenport siblings (minus Leo) sometimes forgot where they were and touched each other’s daemons, Alpha getting pat on the head by Bree and Quark getting lifted off the ground by Adam and Theia hopping onto Chase’s shoulder sometimes to get away from other students, and wasn’t that just disgusting?
It doesn’t really matter, until it does, because Marcus says he understands. Him and Nicola, a short-tailed weasel who makes Mr. Davenport jump a solid three feet into the air the first time he sees her. Marcus says the rules are dumb anyway. There’s nothing wrong with it, especially when it’s within family members. It’s not disgusting.
There’s always an odd glint in his eyes when he brings that topic up. Not daemons. Family.
Nobody wonders why except Leo.
“They’re kids!” Donald argued, Erwin hisses in agreement, his tail twitching as he stares Tesla down from her place across from him on Douglas’ shoulder. “You can’t just use them as weapons!”
“They’re my creations! I can do whatever I want with them!” Douglas threw his hands up. “You’ve made plenty of bad calls with our business! This is something that will finally get us back on track!”
“By using children as weapons!” Donald shook his head. “I can’t believe—it’s like I don’t even know you. Kids, Douglas. They were kids.”
“...They were kids?” Tesla growled, baring her tiny, needle-sharp teeth. Erwin noted that that was the part she disagreed with. Not that they were children in the first place. He’d use that as a comfort later. Douglas and Tesla always knew the kids were people, no matter how much they pretended otherwise.
“What did you do to them?” Douglas demanded, taking a threatening step forward. Donald reaches for the nearest tool he can use as a weapon, and all of Erwin’s fur fluffs out to make him look bigger. “What did you do to my products?”
“How can you have a daemon if you’re not even human?” Chase demands. Quark has currently modeled herself after Fang, clinging to his arm with her small bearded dragon claws, throat puffed and darkened. Too upset to be able to think of a way out of the situation because Chase can’t do it himself. “You don’t—you can’t even have a soul!”
“Oh, like you do?” Marcus rolls his eyes. Nicola—really Tesla, and no, Douglas has never been very creative. He’s the same guy who named his creations after the letters of the alphabet—is nowhere in sight, currently circling Douglas’ feet and telling him that the kids are fighting. “Come on. At this point I’m probably less of an abomination than you are.”
“I think he’s a witch,” Adam announces, having spent the past fifteen minutes scrutinizing Marcus.
“I am not a witch,” Marcus says, clearly offended.
“Witches aren’t real,” Quark and Theia say at the same time.
Theia’s a flying squirrel, hiding down the front of Bree’s shirt. Alpha went more in Quark’s direction, deciding to be a thorny lizard sitting on top of Adam’s foot.
Adam starts to say that witches are real, and he’s pretty sure Mr. Davenport is one, but Bree claps her hand over his mouth before he can. They don’t need to piss off the scary evil bionic teenager who has been spying on them for months. That’s kind of the last thing they need.
Chase isn’t the first one to figure out what’s wrong between Tesla and Douglas, but Quark is, beard puffing even more as she realizes. He couldn’t have possibly been close enough to stay within range of his daemon the whole time so Marcus could pretend that she was his own. It just wouldn’t have worked. So…
They don’t get a chance to talk about it. Not until that night, when they all decide to climb into Adam’s capsule and curl up with each other. It’s a but of a tight squeeze, even with Alpha, Theia, and Quark all shrunken down into a milk snake, a poodle moth, and a Pacific chorus frog respectively. And even when they’re in there, they don’t really talk about it.
They just think about it. And about everything else they’ve learned in the past view days. And about what they’re going to do now. And about whether or not being created by someone like Douglas means they’re putting the rest of their close-knit family in danger just by being around them. But they’re close enough that they don’t need to talk about it. Just thinking together is enough. For once, Adam doesn’t open his mouth to ruin it.
The minute when they think Adam is dead is the scariest moment in Bree’s life. It might not be the first time, but it’s never felt so real. Even before it didn’t feel as frightening and permanent as it does now. It was never a real possibility. But now… but now…
She loves her family. She really, really loves them, even if sometimes she thinks she’s pretty crappy at showing it. When Adam doesn’t resurface, she clings to Chase’s hand until her knuckles go white, Theia a tern circling above their heads and as far out over the choppy water as she can. Quark is draped around Chase’s neck, corn snake tongue flicking in and out with the worry Chase himself doesn’t know how to express.
“He can’t be—he can’t be gone,” Quark says. She swivels her head to look at Bree for support. Bree keeps her eyes trained on the spot where Adam disappeared, Alpha a huge beaked whale beside him. “Adam’s not gone.”
“Nobody could survive that long,” Theia cries from above them. This isn’t right, either. It should be Quark and Chase who know this isn’t possible.
“I can’t believe this,” Chase says. He looks at her, eyes huge. “He wasn’t supposed to…”
They’d known if they turned on the GPS they would have been found. Taken away by the government, probably, and experimented on for god knows how long. That they’d known. But it should have been the three of them. Not two, with Adam missing. If he was—if he really was dead, and thinking about that makes Bree’s entire chest seize up, they wouldn’t even be able to find his body.
(Besides, if one of them died, it was never supposed to be Adam, their big brother, the one who was supposed to be there for everything…)
And then Adam’s voice says “What are we looking at?” from behind them and they both spin around to punch him in unison before dragging him and Alpha, who’s a fluffy little penguin in his arms, into a tight hug.
They’re so elated he’s alive they don’t even notice that the tips of the ears sticking out of Mr. Davenport’s pocket when he comes to pick them up look different from normal.
Later, Chase and Quark will curse themselves for not noticing that something was off. They should have realized it wasn’t actually him. They were just so caught up in Adam being alive, in the hope that things might actually turn out okay, that they could really go home, that they went right by twenty bright red flags.
That “later” doesn’t even come when the illusion falls away. The reaction is delayed, so it comes when Krane and his Komodo dragon step from the shadows.
Bree’s never seen someone with a Komodo dragon. The closest thing is Perry and Fang. But a bearded dragon is small. Harmless, really. All bark and no bite. Nothing compared to this massive reptile, tail moving back and forth slowly across the ground.
Douglas proudly calls him his partner, but Bree doesn’t miss the way Tesla and the Komodo dragon daemon regard each other with suspicion. Clearly, it’s not quite as trusting a partnership as he’d like it to come off.
“We’ll escape,” Quark says, glittering lynx eyes watching the Komodo dragon warily. Alpha huffs in bear agreement, and Theia clicks a falcon beak. “You can’t keep us here. We’ll get away. We’ll get back to—to Mr. Davenport and Leo. And Tasha. They’re okay, and we’ll get back to them.”
Krane laughs. His daemon laughs with him. It’s not a pleasant sound.
Of course, they do escape. They get home where they can hug their family and hear Cirrus’ chirps of “we were so worried about you!” and wait for Leo to finally be done clinging onto them as tightly as he can.
They escape and they get home and then the world goes fuzzy.
It was the scariest moment of Bree’s life when she thought Adam was dead.
It was the scariest moment of Leo’s when he thought his siblings were going to kill him.
Silvius balances on his shoulders as a margay, spotted fur and hackles raised. Alpha, Theia, and Quark snarl up at him as three wolves. “This isn’t you!” He tries to insist, lashing tail smacking into the wall behind him and against Leo’s face. “You’re our family!”
“C’mon, Chase.” Leo presses back against the wall. If he tries to make a break for it, he’s done for. “We are family. I showed you what it’s like to live in the real world! I’m the one you tell everything to! I’m your brother! You don’t want to do this! I have pictures of us, lots of them!” He shifts his focus. “Quark, you remember, don’t you? Our first day at school? That time you helped me cheat on my algebra test? Oh—sorry, Mom.”
Quark’s head twitches in unison with Chase’s. Neither of them say anything. Silvius looks between the three other daemons with wide eyes before jumping to the ground, touching down as a small fox, large ears pinned back slightly. He lowers himself down to the floor. “Please, Chase—”
Quark jumps forward, teeth snapping, and Silvius leaps back and scrambles up Leo’s body as a squirrel. Leo’s heart jumps into his throat. “Whoa! Hey! No! C’mon, you don’t have to do this! I’m your brother! You’re my brother! And my brother wouldn’t do this!” He swallows. “I know you’re in there, Chase. I know my brother’s in there. He’s in both of you. You’re my brother, and I love you, and you’re not going to do this!”
For a minute the box hangs above him, and then Chase flings it aside and collapses in a heap on the ground.
Leo drops to his knees and tries to take deep breaths as Silvius buries his face in Leo’s neck. Quark manages to stagger a few steps in Chase’s direction before falling beside him. Leo can’t do anything but try not to cry, so Tasha and Cirrus dart over to try to do something to help, and—
Then Chase’s eyes blink open, and he flails one arm in the direction of his siblings before blacking out again. Whatever he did, though, it’s enough to make Bree and Theia and Adam and Alpha fall like puppets with cut strings, and Leo silently thanks whatever the heck is looking down on them for finally letting something go right.
“Are you okay?” He asks Silvius as he clambers down from his shoulder. His squirrel tail is all bushed up, surprise clear in every auburn hair on his pelt. “Quark didn’t nip you, or anything, did she?”
“No, no, she didn’t, I just…” He ran in a quick circle, chasing his own tail, before jumping up to perch on the top of Leo’s head. “Don’t you feel it? We’re settled!”
“Mr. Davenport?”
Donald looked down. Chase—not that he was “Chase,” yet, as that wouldn’t be for a few more years, but the good thing about memory was that it allowed for editing to update it with current information—was peering up at him, Quark resting as a dormouse in his arms. “Yeah?”
He shuffled his feet a little. “How did you make our daemons?”
Donald froze up. Truthfully, he had absolutely no idea how Douglas had managed it. Daemons weren’t just something someone could make. The science behind them was… more like magic than anything. When he’d found them, all asleep with their tiny childlike daemons with them… that was what, more than anything, had made him realize they really were just kids. A robot couldn’t have a daemon. A human being could.
How was he supposed to say any of that to a kid who didn’t even know who Douglas was?
“Do you ever worry you’re not going to settle into something you want?” Leo asks. He knows his siblings are weird about settling. But they are his siblings. He can ask them things if he darn well wants to.
Chase blinks at him as Quark bats a piece of popcorn across the floor in the dark. He looks at the screen, Marty McFly with his Labrador daemon bounding along by his side. “Is this about you and Silvius?”
“I just… we never felt like a squirrel.” Leo tries very hard not to sound resentful as he pets Silvius’ ears. “I mean, I know daemons run in families and all, and it’s not like I think my mom is lame for having Cirrus, honestly, I just…”
Chase and Quark exchange a glance before Chase looks Leo up and down, scrutinizing. Honestly, he never gave much thought to what Silvius and Leo would eventually settle as. Whatever it was, it would be right for them, and that was that, right? (Somehow, he’d never managed to apply that to himself.)
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “you’re resourceful. And you’re determined. And you’re clever. And you’re friendly, and nice, and all that.” He shrugs, then smiles. “And you’re really fast when you play dodgeball. So I think it fits. Even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.”
“You’re you,” Quark says gently. Her feline ears twitch. “Whenever you settle, that’s just more of you. It doesn’t change who you are. It just makes you more of yourself on the outside.”
Onscreen, her namesake, Doc Brown’s opossum Quark, shouts something excitedly as she passes Brown some tools while Brown’s dog Einstein looks on.
Leo leans back. Somehow, he looks a little lighter than he did when he sat down for movie night. “Thanks, you two.” He pets his daemon’s fluffy tail. “I think we really needed to hear that.”
Tesla never liked Krane, and he made no secret of it, although he had the good sense to only do it in private. He didn’t like Leistung, either, and the feeling was most assuredly mutual. But Douglas liked Krane, and at least at the start, Krane had made a convincing show of liking him, too, so a partnership it was.
Still, he never really expected to be thought of as… disposable. He’d just assumed he’d somehow always be necessary. The man behind all—okay, not all. The man behind some of Victor Krane’s power. It’d be nice to say most, but that’s probably being generous.
Laying on the cold floor of Krane’s lab, Tesla limp beside him from where Krane had disregarded any societal taboos and flung her down with his own two hands, no bionics required, it’s hard to imagine how he was ever that blind in the first place.
At least they had contingencies. Though it does hurt that Krane doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s not dead. Surely Douglas isn’t the first person to get their heart broken by a supervillain, but it still sucks.
It feels damn good to give him a taste of his own medicine.
It also feels good when Chase stands up for him, Quark nodding her lynx head in agreement even as she locks eyes with Tesla like she’s going to eat her for lunch the first chance she gets.
It’s… a complicated situation.
But at least the kids are safe for the time being. That has to mean something.
“You’re never going to be able to get where you want without separating from Leistung.” Douglas shrugged. Tesla hid her weaselly face in his hair. They may have gone through the… process… themselves, but that didn’t mean she liked to think about it. “We had to figure that out pretty fast.”
Leistung and Krane exchanged a long look, Leistung’s tail swinging back and forth slowly over the hard cement floor. Douglas awkwardly clapped his hands together to keep the intensely awkward silence from stretching out for too long.
“We’ll do it,” Leistung and Krane say in unison. They both turn to look at Tesla and Douglas. “But we’ll do it our way.”
Adam is first.
Of course he is. He’s the oldest. Letter A. He’s always been the one to try things first, the one to make sure it’s safe for his siblings. Every scary movie, every new food, every new experiment. He goes first because he’s the biggest and the most durable and he can take it the way he knows Bree and Chase can’t. So why would it be any different now?
They’re running from the house, Bree for once at a normal speed just to make sure she doesn’t outpace her brothers. Theia zips beside her as an Anna’s hummingbird, while Quark clings as a gecko to Chase’s shoulder beneath his shirt. Alpha keeps up beside them, though her chosen form as a golden retriever isn’t exactly perfect for speed.
“I’m not gonna let them take you away,” Adam pants. They split from Mr. Davenport and Erwin when they decided to head for the hospital to make sure Leo was alright. “I’m not.” Bree thinks he might be crying. “I’ll—I’ll fight all of them if I have to. Every last one. Nobody is gonna take you away.”
Bree just squeezes his hand tighter and picks up the pace.
They only realize when they get to the hospital. Chase rasps out that they need to be inconspicuous so they can sneak in and find out what’s going on from Tasha. Quark can stay a gecko, and Theia can stay a hummingbird, but Alpha needs to go smaller.
Adam knows what she’s going to say before she says it. “We can’t. I can’t.”
It takes Bree a heartbeat longer than it takes Chase and Quark. But they can’t say much, because Chase is still trying to breathe, chest heaving as he crouches on the ground like he’s going to throw up as Quark comfortingly licks his cheek with her tiny Madagascar day gecko tongue. Adam wonders if he left that thing on for too long. Mr. Davenport says that’s bad. “You… you’ve settled? Here? Now?”
Adam looks down at Alpha, then back up at her. “...Um. Yeah.”
When Leo settled, after they’d gotten over the shock of almost dying and after everyone had woken up again, Tasha had thrown a little party, complete with cupcakes and everything. Adam had eaten many of the cupcakes, and Tasha had said that she would buy more when it was his turn to settle, even though at the time it had made Mr. Davenport flinch and cough and look away.
Adam’s not stupid. He knows there isn’t going to be a party this time.
“...Cuter than I expected,” Bree admits before shaking herself and taking Chase’s hand. They really don’t have time for this. God knows how far behind them those agents are, especially with that lead guy’s bloodhound daemon, and it isn’t exactly hard to deduce where they’d go first. “Okay. You hide somewhere out here, alright? We’ll go in and find out if Leo’s okay.”
Adam nods and watches them go, then wanders over to half-heartedly hide behind a tree. He sits on the grass, Alpha’s furry head in his lap.
“I know it’s not what we were expecting,” she says and puts a paw on his leg. She doesn’t talk much. Adam thinks that’s fine by him. She doesn’t have to be a chatterbox like Theia or Quark. “Or when we were expecting it. But I think it’s good. I like being me.”
Adam strokes the top of her head. People expect a lot out of him. He’s Bree and Chase and Leo’s big brother. He’s supposed to be able to protect them. It feels selfish to like the form Alpha’s settled into even though it means she won’t be able to weather as much as she’s supposed to. It’s nice to have a daemon that can comfort instead of just intimidate.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to tell Mr. Davenport. He really, really doesn’t. He was so determined they wouldn’t settle. And now here he is, with Alpha settled, and not even as something big and strong like a bear or a wolf, and he likes it. He’s already a disappointment because he’s not smart like Bree and Theia or especially like Chase and Quark. This will only make things worse.
Alpha licks his face, and Adam manages to smile.
He still likes it, though. Feeling like things have finally clicked into place for him. For them. Yeah, he likes it. It feels like nothing he’s ever felt before. He doesn’t have a good memory for a lot of things, and he knows everyone else thinks he’s just a wall of muscle, but he can remember feelings. So he would definitely remember feeling this sense of wholeness before. Which means this is the first time it’s ever happened.
Adam likes it. A lot. That’s really all there is to say about it. He likes feeling whole.
Even if he knows he’d like being with a happy Leo again more. He’d trade settling for that in a heartbeat.
Bree is next, because she was never one to be left behind.
It’s still a little while later—she was all the more popular for having an unsettled daemon, though for a while they were all half-convinced Theia was going to settle on her current favorite form, a handsome falcon that was perfect for speed and grace and deadly power. Or at least the kids were.
Donald, for his part, didn’t really seem to care. Which was better than how he’d been acting before. He’d been much more accepting of Alpha settling as a golden retriever than they had expected, mostly just relieved to hear that Leo was alright and thankful they’d all made it away from the house safely. There wasn’t much more talk of them being to stay unsettled for their entire lives after that, even if he still sometimes looked at Alpha like he was expecting her to be bigger and stronger and fiercer.
It had been enough to finally get them to start talking about how Bree and Chase would eventually settle. For real this time, and not just Tasha or Leo talking at them with only Adam somewhat reciprocating.
Theia would bounce from form to form as they talked, preferring mammals but always gravitating back to the peregrine falcon, long claws gleaming. Quark was more methodical about it, going through like she was crossing items off a list. She also mainly chose mammals—usually a ferret when Mr. Davenport was watching, then a short-tailed weasel the second he looked away.
So at least Bree knew she’d be accepted when they eventually settled.
Still, it was fairly inconvenient to happen in such a high-stakes situation, even though Theia had the courtesy to wait until the end.
Bree doesn’t even know these soldiers, or their daemons. She can see Quark as a lynx tangling with a cougar, Erwin and Tesla working in tandem to fight Krane’s massive Komodo dragon whose name she doesn’t remember (if she ever knew it in the first place), Silvius being chased by a greyhound, and Alpha snapping at the heels of a boar. Theia, for her part, swoops between heads and claws at scalps. Fights like this make her glad they didn’t grow up with the taboo around touching other people’s daemons, or other people touching their own. When she watches them, it’s like they don’t even remember arguing.
Then Chase says all they have to do is take Krane out, and Douglas says he knows how they can, but it’ll be dangerous and they might die, and the three of them look at each other and decide that’s a chance they’re willing to take.
Krane’s soldiers and their daemons let them through. When they’re grouped together like this, they can see that while most of them are their age, some are even younger. Bree can see one that can’t be older than eleven, an armadillo daemon clutched in his arms.
“You could have ruled alongside us,” the Komodo dragon spits. With a jolt, Bree sees the blood smeared around its mouth, and realizes she has no idea where Mr. Davenport is. “But you were weak.”
“And now you’re going to sacrifice yourself for a planet of humans who don’t even accept you.” Krane shakes his head in mock sympathy. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Your father was weak, too.”
Alpha snarls, a surprisingly frightening sound coming from her cuddly body. Quark bares her fangs. Theia doubles in size, trading the agility of a peregrine falcon for the heft of a golden eagle.
“Our family isn’t weak,” Bree says. Her voice is strong. “And we’ll always protect people. Even if they hate us. Getting rewarded doesn’t matter.” She’s surprised to find she means what she’s saying. “All that matters is helping others.”
Afterward, Bree doesn’t really remember what happened. She remembers pressing back to back. She remembers the pain. She remembers feeling her connection to Theia stronger than ever before, but she also knows she felt Adam and Chase’s connections to their daemons, too. She remembers Krane screaming. And that’s it.
The next thing she remembers is waking up on the ground, Theia perched on her chest, tongue licking her nose.
Bree sits up fast, just as Krane’s army falls like dominoes around her. Her brothers are sitting up, too, Quark draped over Chase as a heavy boa constrictor and Alpha licking every inch of Adam’s face.
Something feels different.
She looks down at Theia, who’s bracing her front paws against Bree’s knees and is looking up at her with big dark eyes. The form is unfamiliar. It’s a rabbit, which isn’t new, but it’s big, with massive ears and dark smudges in the fur.
“We’re settled, aren’t we?” Bree feels like she can hardly breathe as she reaches out to touch Theia’s twitching nose. She isn’t fast enough. Theia’s not fast enough. And she’s not small enough to bring her along with on runs most of the time, either. This isn’t right. But it feels like it is.
“Black-tailed jackrabbit,” Quark says, snake head resting on top of Chase’s hair. There are a couple huge scratches marring her shining green scales when Bree looks closer. “Congratulations.”
There won’t be a party this time, either, because Leo screams that he needs help, please, Mr. Davenport’s not breathing—
That’s okay, though. Saving her dad’s life is more important than getting congratulated by anyone other than her brothers (and Douglas) for finally settling. She meant it when she said getting rewarded didn’t matter. Mostly. Enough for it to count.
She’s sure Mr. Davenport will be okay, though. He has to be okay. Everything has to go back to the way it was, just with Bree and Theia settled now like Adam and Alpha are. Everything has to go back to the way it used to be.
Minus the thirty-plus bionic super-soldiers who follow Adam home like a bunch of ducklings.
Chase was always a… late bloomer.
When Donald first took them, he didn’t talk. At all. He was by far old enough to, and he could walk and hear just fine—in fact, he heard a little too well—but he didn’t talk, not until well over three months after he’d been living in the lab. (Then when he started talking, Donald realized he knew six verbal languages as well as American Sign Language, and that he wouldn’t shut up.) Subsequently, Quark didn’t get named until a month after that when they watched Back to the Future together. Then it wasn’t until he was ten that they found out he was even a boy, and so on and so forth.
So he always just assumed certain feelings were like that. Delayed in him. He pretended to have them, sure, but he wasn’t sure he was very convincing. Girls in his chemistry who after some research could be deemed as conventionally very attractive. Celebrities Leo said he liked, so Chase pretended to like them, too.
Feelings were like that. Why shouldn’t settling be like that, too? What was it Leo said… “fake it ‘til you make it?”
It’s after the move to the artificial island that he starts exploring his feelings a little more, just as Quark starts seriously wanting to settle.
She tries out different shapes for longer periods of time. Like before, she likes being a weasel the most. They try out a few other mustelids, but it feels like they’re just waiting for the day when she wakes up as a weasel and stays that way. Her second-favorite is a raccoon, because the dexterous hands are able to assist Chase in projects, but they always go back to weasel. Always.
While Quark tries out different forms, Chase checks out Sebastian.
Muninn settled as a common raven practically the second S-3 shook off his brainwashing, and was officially named shortly after. He and Quark hit it off when their humans do, and the four of them spend lots of time together.
To Quark and Muninn, it’s not a surprise when Sebastian kisses Chase and Chase kisses back.
As it turns out, Chase isn’t so much of a late bloomer as one that had spent the whole time pointing in the wrong direction from the sun.
Quark and Muninn preen each other as ravens, one common, one white-necked, and sometimes Sebastian scratches the back of Quark’s head in the place she can never reach. In private, of course. Adam and Bree would never let him live it down if they knew. Not… not that he thinks they wouldn’t be accepting. He knows they would be, for a variety of reasons. But it’s nice to have something that’s just his. Something his siblings can’t tease him about.
Maybe if he had told them, things would have ended better. Maybe they could’ve stopped Sebastian and his little uprising before anything too bad happened. Maybe they could have really found a way to convince him that what he was going to try to do was wrong.
Instead, it ends in the hydroloop bay with Muninn in a cage, swearing up a storm, and with Tank’s boar and Lexi’s serval tranquilized on the ground, their three humans tied up on the floor. Quark perches on Chase’s shoulder, a pied crow this time—technically a small raven, but just different enough that she knows it’ll piss Muninn and Sebastian off.
“I can’t believe you told him everything,” Bree sighs the second their three little revolutionaries are gone, poking him in the ribs. Theia thumps her back feet in agreement. “Any of our secrets you didn’t spill because someone told you they wanted to make a friendship bracelet?”
Chase doesn’t say anything, looking back and forth between the now-empty track and Quark, who’s still on his shoulder and is now fluffing up all of her black and white feathers, looking agitated.
“I can’t change back,” she squawks. She clicks her beak a few times before jumping down to the ground and pacing back and forth just like Chase does whenever he’s upset. “Why can’t I change back?!”
Adam laughs and scratches behind Alpha’s ears. “What, like you’ve settled?” He looks at Chase, who is now completely frozen, staring at his daemon while his world tilts sideways, and the smile slides right off his face. “You’ve settled?!”
Chase manages to kneel, and Quark jumps into his arms, pressing her beak under his chin. There’s the sound of clicking nails from behind him, and then Alpha shoves her muzzle into Chase’s ear and licks his cheek. Theia does what she did when she first settled and gets up on her hind legs, resting one paw on Chase’s knee.
“Welcome to the club,” she says, bumping her nose against his shoulder.
Chase wants to say that he doesn’t feel like a raven. Ravens are like Sebastian. Calculating and clever and evidently cold and ruthless. He’s not like that, is he? Especially because even though he doesn’t feel like Quark is shaped the way she’s supposed to, it doesn’t feel wrong. It feels right. More right than anything else had been.
He tries to remember what he and Quark told Leo when Silvius first settled.
“This doesn’t change who we are,” he whispers to her. Then, louder, he says, “It just makes us more us.”
“Well, yeah, duh,” Adam says. “That’s kind of the point of it.”
“Do you think settling hurts?” Bree asked, swinging her legs where she sat on the desk. Theia was curled up as a field mouse in her pocket.
Adam looked up from where he was laying sprawled on the floor with Alpha, who was wearing the form of a black bear. “If it hurts, I’ll punch it right in the face.”
“You can’t punch settling in the face,” Chase said. (Still not Chase, yet.) Quark nodded her head in agreement, perched as a squirrel monkey on the very top of his head. “It doesn’t have a face. Or a form. It’s a concept. And I don’t think it hurts. It’s not like—like someone pokes you with a needle. It just happens. You can’t do anything about it.”
“Yes I can,” Mr. Davenport announces as he walks into the lab, Erwin scurrying at his heels. “Just you wait. None of you will ever need to settle if I have anything to say about it.”
When they wake up in the pit (sorry, “induction chamber” or whatever), Daniel and Kvara aren’t there.
Also Bob says they got taken away, tiny rat claws clinging to Bob’s shirt while he worriedly pets her ears. Quark starts nervously chattering about all the things that could mean while Alpha starts wandering through the crowd of students and their daemons to provide what little comfort she can. Theia nervously circles Bree’s feet. Daniel and Kvara aren’t really a part of their bond. But it’s still their brother, and their student. He has to be okay. He just has to be.
Even when they get out, they can’t find him. Giselle isn’t exactly being forthcoming, and neither is her tigress. He can’t be dead, or hurt too badly. She would have been rubbing it in their faces if he were. That’s something of a comfort.
At least Leo’s looking for him.
And he finds him, right when he destroys Marcus, because of course. Of course.
“You just had to steal our thunder, didn’t you?” Leo sighs as they start pillaging the lab for useful parts. Silvius laughs into his tail and Leo scowls at him. Traitor.
“Sorry.” Daniel shrugs despite his wide smile. Kvara’s brown and white Jack Russell terrier tail wags as she gives Leo a massive doggy grin. “Oh, and we settled, too.”
“Nice,” Tesla comments as she scampers by, setting down the wiring clutched in her mouth so she can speak. “Youngest in the family! Even beat Silvius and Leo by a few weeks.”
Leo throws his hands up in the air. “Come on!”
The hallway is covered in Dust when they finally manage to find Adam, Bree, and Chase. For a minute it’s terrifying, but they’re all alive, and even though it would be impossible for one to live while the other died it’s still slightly nerve-wracking to look around before registering the group’s daemons are by their sides. Apparently a tiger can hold a lot of Dust in it.
Alpha nearly squishes Kvara when she rushes forward to lick her head in a blur of golden fur and whiskers and happiness. Adam isn’t too far behind with a bear hug for Daniel’s human half. Somehow, even though she had a delayed response when it came to herself, Quark recognizes that they’ve settled, and swoops low while cawing a congratulation. Theia bounces straight for Silvius to make sure he’s alright, which makes Leo feel nice.
Adam says that they sent the kids back and left Bob (and Also Bob by extension) in charge, which makes Donald sigh very deeply because Bob is twelve, but at least that means they’re alive. Or they were when they left. With Bob in charge it’s anybody’s guess.
“We’ll be able to fix your chips,” Tesla promises, which is when everyone notices that she’s on Donald’s shoulder, and that Erwin is in her usual spot on Douglas’. “We’ve got everything we need here and at the lab.”
“The lab on the island or the lab back home?” Bree asks as she bends over to scoop Theia up. She’s a big girl, and they haven’t really found a way to make it less ungainly in all the time that they’ve been settled, but they manage it. It’s a work in progress.
“Back home,” Douglas confirms. He shoves his brother forward a little. “Besides, Donnie’s got a surprise for everyone waiting there.”
Bree cheers and zips off while Donald glares accusingly at Erwin, who twitches his whiskers in response. “It’s not like I told him what it was.”
Daniel beams and runs back over to hug onto Adam again before hopping back and bouncing in place. “Let’s go! We want to see the original lab!”
“Can’t do that, your dad blew it up.” Leo slings his arm around his shoulders. “But you can see the new and improved version. Not to brag or anything, but I helped design it. Otherwise it would still be the color of wet cement inside. Your uncle has the theming taste of a Decepticon.”
“Optimus Prime!” Adam says happily. Alpha shakes her head as she leads the rest of them out of the labyrinth of hallways toward the exit, following her nose.
“Megatron,” Chase corrects.
Silvius chitters with laughter and Quark makes a warbling noise in the back of her throat.
Some things—the good things—never change.
A year later, Kaz will sit upside-down on the couch on the main floor of their headquarters, Kirby’s chocolate labrador head next to his where she’s laying on the couch with him. He’ll try and fail to catch a few jelly beans in his mouth and ask, “How did you guys settle? Was it weird because of your powers, or whatever?”
Bree and Chase will look at each other, then shrug. Theia, stretched out at Bree’s feet, will look up at Quark, who’s perched on top of the computer Chase is using to reply to the picture Leo just sent him of baby Naomi curled up with Obed in the form of a little ground squirrel daemon.
Quark will dip her wings in a shrug. “It wasn’t what we were expecting. So I think the experience was just like anyone else’s.”