The doorbell rung. "Coming!" dad shouted. "Don't worry. I'll play it off as a mistake or a prank," he added more quietly, leaving me with the sleeping duo. If they came in, this would not be pretty. How do I keep my family safe from the crossfire? I heard the door open, and dad giving a greeting.

"Hello? Can I help..."

Dad's voice was cut off with a grunt, followed by pounding footsteps. Forget hiding... They just hurt my father! They dared to harm my flock. If they killed him, I will end this whole damn country! I marched out to the top of the stairs in righteous indignation. Well, maybe not completely righteous, but very definitely indignant.

"Target sighted on staircase, engaging," said a figure in body armour and gas mask, after opening fire on me with some sort of machine gun. That obviously woke mum up, who started screaming.

Oddly, it hadn't even occurred to me that walking into the line of fire of some sort of specialist military group was probably ill advised. It just seemed completely implausible to me that they could harm me. And indeed, they couldn't, so I just stood there until they stopped firing.

"Weapons ineffective," the same figure said. "Repeat, weapons ineffective."

"If you wake up my little brother with all this noise," I said, "I'm going to take those guns of yours and shove them so far up your arses you'll be spitting bullets." I at least maintained enough presence of mind to not threaten to rip their hearts out and eat them, not that I particularly wanted to eat this lot. They looked unappetising.

"Permission granted for explosives," came another voice from some communications device. "Collateral damage authorised."

"And if you hurt my little brother..." I continued, any presence of mind now utterly shattered, walking slowly down the stairs. "I will show the whole country of Lecolie the true meaning of the word monster."

He didn't respond, but grabbed a grenade from his waist, dying to a lightning bolt to the head before he'd even been able to lift his hand. Apparently I've developed enough to shoot them now. Nice.

"Target unconfirmed," shouted a second soldier. "We have a harpy queen here, not a regular harpy. It's intelligent, talking, and apparently defending the residents of this house."

Now at the bottom of the stairs, I could see my dad lying unconscious outside of the front door, bleeding from his head, and being lifted onto a stretcher. "And which one of you bastards did that?" I asked, coldly, as a half dozen burly, masked soldiers with body armour and heavy weaponry backed away from me. Dad was breathing, but had clearly been knocked out. He didn't seem to be in danger, thank goodness, but they did seem to be in the process of taking him somewhere. As if I would let them... The soldiers moving him melted under my torrent of lightning.

To avoid further danger to my family, I stepped out into the street. "Well, come on then! I shouted. No collateral damage to worry about out here. If you want me, come and get me!"

Okay... did not think this through. There's a tank in the road. Should not have gone outdoors, or at least taken the back door. How did they get a tank down a residential street? This one's barely wide enough for a bike! At least five copters in the sky too. Can't see what sort of armaments they have at first glance, but I'll assume some rather big guns. And yet, none of it scared me. It still didn't feel like anything could hurt me.

The tank actually fired, which seemed like a spectacularly bad idea in such a narrow street, but I just held up a wing and the shell failed to penetrate. Even my feathers were unruffled. I could probably just fly away if needed, now that my other wing had finished regenerating, but I didn't. I heard the clatter of grenades landing around me, and ignored them, considering them unworthy of dodging. The explosions did nothing, failing to even deafen me.

More bullets struck me, snipers in the choppers. Again, they did nothing. Another chopper launched missiles, so then I took off, but not because I was worried about myself; I just didn't want to see the street destroyed. I zapped them with lightning before they could reach me, anyway.

By this point, I'd finally got it through my head that something weird was going on. I shouldn't be able to tank a literal tank, upgraded to a harpy queen or not. The queen I'd fought hadn't had that much higher base specs than me. It didn't take much thought to work out what exactly the problem was either; it wasn't just the soldiers in my house, but none of the humans arrayed in front of me looked appetising. Nor did the thought of human in general or, for that matter, squirrel. I was hungry, but the whole idea of 'eating' suddenly seemed unnatural and unpleasant. I hadn't evolved into the human-modified and limited version of a harpy queen. I was the pure blooded original, utterly above anything humanity could throw at me, and destined to starve to death in mere days.