Tzreek looked up when he heard the scrabbling of claws on the side of his nest. He cocked his head to one side and his crest of feathers raised instinctively with curiosity as he peered cautiously out of the narrow aperture he had made in the sliding lid cover of his nest.

Tzreek had opened his nest's lid just wide enough for him to peek out and down and take a shot at one of those horrible legion soldiers with his rifle.

He looked at the dark shape that had landed on his nest and exhaled with relief as the air ruffled the small downy feathers that grew around his beaky nostril.

It was just a crow man. It hopped towards him. If Tzreek's beak would have permitted him to smile, he would have. He was very proud of his creations. He had designed this dose, and they were made in his own image. Also the crow man dose worked well. They could fly, they could think, and they were loyal enough despite the fact that they were cowardly and would flee as soon as the situation did not favor them.

Tzreek popped his head up and waved his wings a few times to shoo the crow man away.

“This is not a place to rest! Get down there and attack them!” He brusquely ordered, pointing down at the group of Legionnaires far below.

Then he turned to take a shot with his rifle. It missed, impacting in the sand beside a Legionnaire, who wasen't even bothered to notice or look up at him. "It had become harder for him to aim an emitter since he had become a bird.” He thought ruefully.

The crow man ignored his order and hopped forward. Its wings were wrapped around itself in a weird way, looking like someone had their hands in the front pockets of a trench coat, that they were about to fling open at any moment.

“I don’t think so.” The crow man said in a breathy whispering caw.

“You don’t think so?” Tzreek said, and stopped aiming his rifle, to turn and inspect the crow man. It was a crow man, but he noticed that it was all wrong. Its eyes glowed with an eerie blue light. Then It sashayed forward towards him.

“You’ve been a naughty boy Tzreek, or should I call you Bradley Hovis.”

Tzreek couldn’t believe his bird ears.

“What did you just say to me?” He squawked indignantly.

No-one except the Drydellians knew his old name, and he doubted any of them cared enough to remember it.

“Oh Bradley? That is nothing. I also know your parents loved you so much, after all you were their only child. I know you spent a week alone in the Drydellian drain network weeping your way through the hybrid transformation. I know that at your core, all you want to do is leap off this pillar city and glide away into the bright blue morning sky. Why can’t you admit the true desires of your soul? Pride and fear. Pride and fear. Proud of what you wrongfully stole, and afraid if you no longer had any power, you’d be alone. Since your personality like your soul has become so utterly vile. Afraid without the power to compel them to be around you, your life would be like that week in the drains, weepy and alone. But you really shouldn’t worry about that. You’d never last a week before all those that hate you would eventually catch up to you. You should have flown off the pillar city into that bright morning sky. You should have listened to your heart."

The crowman with the blue eyes tisked, him with sharp clicks of his beak. Tzreek felt as if his spine had turned into a shivering core of ice.

“How do you know all this?! Nobody knows this!”

“There is just one thing I can’t figure out, Bradley.” The crow man stopped, its blue eyes now started to blaze with icy fire. Tzreek lifted his rifle, trying his best to keep it steady despite his trembling claws.

“I can’t figure out how this isn’t going to kill you.”

“Stay back! You’re not one of mine!” He fired point blank into the crow man. It struck him in the gut. But the crow man did not react.

Instead he opened his wings like a flasher, on a busy city street.

“You’re right. I’m not.”

Tzreek saw the clag charge too late as he dove under the resisteel lid. The explosion rocked his nest. He was lanced with fire and pain as his world went spinning. He could hear an ethereal laughing voice that followed him as he blindly spun around, “Ah, Now I see. We’ll talk again soon Bradley. I’ll be seeing you real soon.”

Tzreek screamed, as the resisteel nest struck something meaty and then careened off that and went sliding through the sand as it came to a veering stop resting on its side.