Cacopheny had only vaguely remembered what teleporting was like, from years ago, when Aedelian had first transported them all to the meadow beyond Sanctuary's woods. He'd quite forgotten how disconcerting it was to suddenly see everything different from one blink to the next. He'd forgotten the disorientation of seeing the shadows all around him suddenly shifted. He'd definitely forgotten the racket the shadows had raised, last time, some of them confused by the switch, some of them angry at being moved without their permission, others surprised and stammering.

Now, however, he definitely remembered. Ooooh, how he remembered....

Put us back, you crazy--

--where are we? I don't like it! I wanna go--

--what is this place? It's all... metal... and--

--old coot! How dare you just toss us around like--

--home, I don't like it here! Let us go home! I--

--and false fronting... and--

--we don't have a say in anything! I'll tear your--

--I'm scared, it all looks funny, it smells funny--

--and I don't know what else! Why, look at that--

Yes, he remembered, because Aedelian had done it again. He'd been a little prepared, this time, since he actually knew what "teleportation" was, this time, and had been expecting it for some time now. They were at Star City, all right, and for the most part, none of them liked it.

I wonder what that thing over there does....

Well, Genner was usually the exception for things, so that was hardly surprising.

"Here we are!" Aedelian chirped cheerfully. "Home sweet home...."

They'd transported into the middle of what Aedelian had warned them ahead of time was his living room, on the dragon-sized side of his dwelling. The walls looked like wood, but smelled wrong, and Genner said it was false-wood, layered on top of a metal base. How he knew, Cacopheny didn't know, but he took the shadow's word for it. The furniture all looked wrong, too... as if it were as false as the wood paneling. Lights hovered and blinked in various corners, from various boxes and screens, but not even Genner knew what those were.

Everyone had come: Cacopheny, Akija, Sentio, Chario, and even Kenjista. Thankfully, the room they were in was dragon-sized, and so large enough for them all, plus Aedelian. The house-- or whatever it was-- seemed otherwise empty. At least, Cacopheny could hear no other voices, shadow or otherwise-- if he even could, through the chatter in his head.

Movement at his side made him look down, and he caught Akija starting to stalk towards one of those boxes of blinking lights. Before he could react-- or figure out whether his would-be initial reaction of trying to stop her from touching a potentially dangerous thing was right or not-- she stopped, taking a step back and glaring lightly at Chario. He had her by the wing, grinning. "This is somebody's house, remember," he reminded her.

"And I expected you would want to look around," Aedelian chuckled. "There's nothing in here that's too breakable, and certainly nothing dangerous. I have children, after all."

Children? Children? No children! No!

Just... keep them away from me.

But I wanna see 'em! I'd be great with kids!

No, you wouldn't, you'd torment them.

I wanna meet some other kids....

You've met other kids before, Glory. Hell, you live with some!

But that's not the saaaaaame!

"Vere. Arrre ssey?" Cacopheny asked carefully.

"School, at the moment," Aedelian grinned. "You'll met them later."

"Why don't you, er, tell us what everything is?" Sentio suggested, staring with a frown at a raised ring on the floor, glowing faintly with panels of blue and a few buttons.

"That's the holo," Aedelian chuckled. "You watch holos-- videos-- um. Plays, sort of, acted out on them."

"Plays," Akija repeated, sounding incredulous. "On that little thing?" She promptly transferred her attention to the "holo", much to Aedelian's amusement, and this time Chario didn't stop her. "What, are actors really tiny around here? Can you show us?"

"Well, certainly." Aedelian padded over amiably-- though not to the device itself. Instead, he rummaged around in the drawer of a little, metallic table.

Genner perked up. What's this? What's this?

"And it's not the actors, really. It's more like... illusion. Only without magic. Now where... aha." He withdrew a little, gray box with rounded edges and even more buttons, aimed it at the "holo", and pressed one.

"And in political news, Public Minister Falken--"

Sound and light quite suddenly filled the room, and Cacopheny took a startled step back from the giant face that suddenly filled the air above the "holo". He wasn't the only one, either: Sentio scrambled back several feet, and Akija actually jumped, bumping into Chario behind her. Sound only lasted a moment, for Aedelian pressed another button, and suddenly the voice vanished, leaving behind the face with its moving mouth, with nothing coming out. Cacopheny inched closer again, fascinated despite himself, and Genner was all but incoherent with glee, peering out through his eyes. The image seemed oddly solid, fully three-dimensional, as if there really was half a person hovering above the glowing panels. Akija sidled up beside him, apparently just as interested.

"Illusion," she repeated with a grin, swinging right back into curiosity from surprise. "Got it."

And then, without preamble, she stuck her fingers into the "illusion". Though Cacopheny twitched back the impulse to tug her hand away, nothing happened. Well, nothing happened, except everything above her finger warped strangely. When she stuck her whole hand in, that whole part of the image disappeared, and the bottom of her hand was lit up, as if....

It's being projected! Genner interrupted the thought eagerly. From the bottom, there, see? And the girl's hand is blocking it-- so it's being projected onto her hand! Oh, this is just amazing-- why can't they have things like this at home?

Cacopheny didn't deign to answer that; interesting it was, homey it was not, and he didn't think he'd want something like that at home. Sentio peered at it around his elbow as Akija withdrew her hand, and the image returned to normal, now shrinking and expanding to show a trio of faces around a curved table, all talking amongst themselves silently. Cacopheny noticed, vaguely, that they had no shadows, which meant Genner was probably right, and they were projected images of some kind, not even a true illusion.

"Cool," Akija grinned.

Aedelian clicked another button on the small box he held and the image vanished. "You can watch all sorts of things on it: fictional stories, real stories, series, reality holovision.... If you get bored, at all, feel free to put on some of my holos, provided you can find any that aren't meant more for the children than Vyly and me."

Ooooh, can we?

What, watch childrens' illusion-stories? Fuck no.

Awwww....

"Awesome, thanks!" Chario smiled, and Akija turned away from the holo-ring in search of the next Star City technological marvel. Sentio followed almost as eagerly, and Cacopheny went because they went-- and because Genner's curiosity was a little catching! This time, Akija chose what Aedelian called an "air conditioner", or a "climate control"-- or the controls for it, anyway, a panel set into the wall. Then she moved on to something called a "stereo system", which Aedelian demonstrated the function of by turning on: it produced music like nothing Cacopheny had ever heard before.

Before Akija, Sentio, and Genner could move on to the kitchen, Cacopheny, starting to feel overwhelmed by it all now, interrupted, "Vere isss Tchiya? And Ketvya?"

"Oh, they're with their eggs," Aedelian blinked.

Akija paused and blinked, herself, then she laughed. "Aw, geez, with alla these gadgets, I forgot! We better go visit'em."

"Well, since that is why you came," Aedelian chuckled, "might as well. Come on, we'll take the lift, it's fastest. And there will be fewer 'gadgets' to distract us."

"The 'lift'?" Sentio asked, following as the Air as he started across the room, towards what looked like it might be a closed door.

It was> a door, because it opened to something that could have been a residential street, if it hadn't been largely metallic and... some other material Cacopheny had never seen before. Aedelian led the whole group of them outside, explaining as he did so. "An elevator. A little room that moves around and takes you to different places in the station-- like the docking bays where the Abstract Destiny, and your friends, are."

"Moving rooms!" Akija cackled. Cacopheny joined in while she looked around at the bizarre "front lawns" of the various apartments, and the metal ceiling overhead-- a sight that wasn't all that strange. It was, perhaps, the only thing that seemed comforting about the whole place. "This place gets better 'n better," she grinned, putting her hands out to catch both Chario and Cacopheny by their elbows and hang amiably between them. Cacopheny was, finally, getting used to those random acts of affection, and had stopped jumping whenever she did them.

Most of the time, anyway. This time, he jumped.

Moron.

Hey, I'm a little jumpy, too! It's this place, it's so... weird!

And you're a moron, too.

Hey...!

Then a passing... something's shadow hissed something at them, which Cacopheny didn't understand, and his own shadows fell silent with what Cacopheny guessed was confusion. Akija, thankfully, was forgiving, and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, half-stepping a little closer. Cacopheny smiled faintly at her, covering her fingers with his.

Then, Chario asked, "So is everybody doin' alright, eggs and all?"

"I believe so," Aedelian answered amiably. "The clutch is... huge, but Chiya's quite happy looking after them all."

"How huge is 'huge'?" Sentio asked suspiciously. "I mean, we only have one, maybe two at a time-- what do they have, three? Four?"

The Air chuckled softly. "Twenty-two. Twenty-three if you count their first-hatched, Callidei."

Sentio stopped walking. Chario stumbled. Suddenly, Akija's tug on Cacopheny's arm increased ten-fold as his stumble dragged on her, and he stopped, too, to keep from being pulled over. "Sorry, sorry," Chario apologized, finding his feet again and catching up again. Aedelian looked back over his shoulder, made an amused sound, and turned to face them, as both Chario and Akija looked up at him in amazement, and Sentio still looked like he was in shock. "Twenty-three!"

Cacopheny, having never really thought about dragon reproduction beyond the single class on it-- what, two years ago?-- just looked between them all and let someone else ask and explain.

I think twenty-three is a little much for any creature, Araski muttered.

"How can they keep them all?!" Akija demanded incredulously.

"They aren't going to," Aedelian explained. "That was the price of the doctor using their DNA to make them children: others who might want to adopt one of their children can apply to do so, and if Doctor Schroeder approves of them, and the parents approve of them, they get an egg. Chiya and Ketvia will be keeping whichever of them wishes to stay with them. The current estimate is two."

"So he's doing a kind of... adoption service?" Chario blinked.

Akija couldn't stand it anymore. "Is Shray-der a daemon?"

"Yes," Aedelian said first, "and no. He is running an adoption service, of sorts, and no, he is not a daemon. He's a human-- I think, anyway. He looks human. He has a daemon associate, however, named Devika." For some reason, he seemed to find this funny, chuckling as he started walking again, giving Sentio a nudge with his tail fluke to get him started again.

"Twenty-three..." Sentio repeated, mostly to himself. "Wow."