He never wanted to return to that house ever again. Blood, bones, and guts were scattered all over the floor. It was invigorating and satisfying to have watched, but when it was over, it simply looked horrible. So horrible, that the moment the dragon finished and dropped his mental concentration, Eric immediately took control. He released the lifeless body onto the ground, ran to the third floor, jumped out of the window and flew away, even though he was completely out in the open.

He shivered when recalling the images of the scene; the poor man did not stand a chance at all. The dragon dominated him physically and mentally, terrorizing him until he passed out due to the horror. Eric could and would not ever explain what had followed. It was much too gruesome to describe in mere words.

Flying relieved most of his stress, but the dragon on the other side seemed to repeatedly want to grab control. It had quickly gotten used to the host body, and it wanted it back. Subsequently, every once and a while, Eric felt a limb twitch or move seemingly on its own; this began to seriously irritate him, as he noticed it occurring more and more. After a few struggling moments, the dragon grew tired of the stupidity, obliging Eric to cease flying due to his increasing loss of control. In mid-air, it took control of one wing, messing up his coordination, forcing him to struggle in order to keep his concentration intact. His tail was beginning to move according to its own instinctive requests, and his eyes strained in order to push away the yellow shine of the unpreventable berserk mode.

He lost altitude fast, and after a certain point, he had no control over his altitude at all. He felt the wind blow against him as he fell, struggling to keep his feet in direction of the incoming earth. Suddenly, the dragon itself made a mistake, which was to cease attempting to gain control, in fear of causing an accident. This was a very sudden move to Eric, who received total control at once, messing up his concentration, and causing his wings to catch air the wrong way. There was no way to get out.

Luckily, Eric fell with a large thud onto a house's roof below him, which broke the fall. But unfortunately for him, the roof was quite steep, which caused him to slide helplessly down the side, the shock of the previous fall disabling his ability to stop himself. In succession, he fell off of the 14-foot high roof, crashing into the ground, landing arm-first into the grass-filled yard. He hit his head upon impact, which rendered him unconscious.

...

He was awoken by the startled yells of a woman, yelling in front of him at around two in the morning. Eric jumped up, startled and sore from the fall, and came to his senses. The woman was screaming, obviously frightened of him, so Eric groggily tried to calm her down.

"Lady! Lady! Stop yelling, please!" A pounding headache erupted in his head, triggered both by the fall and the frantic screams.

She backed into her house in shock. "No! It's you! You're the dragon from the news! Aah! Get away from me, you monster!"

Eric tried to seem as sincere and nice as possible, but his dragon form was much too intimidating for her to withstand. "Please! I'm not going to hurt you! Quit yelling, you're going to wake the whole neighborhood!"

"No! You're lying! You're going to kill me just like you did everyone else! Eek!" She grabbed a broom from beside her fridge, which was well in her reach. Unfortunately for her, she gripped the wrong side and hit Eric in the head with straw. This did not hurt, but was quite annoying. "Get away from me!"

He quickly grew irritated. "Lady! Stop it-- ow! I just want to explain! Just let me-- ow! Just let me explain why I-- ow!" When he reached his limit, Eric let out a loud roar which echoed across the room. The woman in front of him dropped her broom in fright, and backed up toward her living room.

"Please...", she said, her voice trembling. "Don't hurt me... I have a lot to live for and I don't want to die right now..."

Eric was getting frustrated. "How many times do I have to tell you?! I won't! Look..." He began to shift back into his human self. "Are you happy? I can't hurt you anymore."

Her doubts were not completely erased, however she was much calmer now, and was shocked to see such an innocent looking person shift from a dragon to a human form. "What do you want with me...? I never did anything to you."

"I never implied you did. I was simply flying around and fell on your roof."

"So, you aren't going to hurt me...?" She looked at him with a relieved but still cautious face. "Well then why did you kill everyone else?"

"I didn't mean to. Everyone was after me and I had to get away. The first two tried to grab a hold of me, the third was unintentional, and the last one was because we needed a car."

"We?", she asked, looking around, probably suspecting someone else was with him. "Who's we?"

"Oh... umm, Matt. He, uhh, got caught by the police about an hour ago. They took him away in a SWAT car, and he's probably being questioned right now." Eric noticed he had trouble even thinking about him. He did not know what they were doing to him, and did not want to know, or even think about it. He knew he was gone, and he would never see him again.

"Well I guess he deserved it, killing all those people."

For a reason unknown to him, Eric lashed out. "What the fuck do you mean by that? He was an amazing person. He took care of me and helped me out like a true friend. If he killed people, it's because it was necessary in order to continue to reach our goal. He definitely does not deserve whatever he gets."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry..." She clearly feared another encounter with the dragon. "So, what are you saying? The media is lying to everyone?"

"Yeah." He was surprised with how much she had calmed down, and how she seemed to want to befriend him all of a sudden. "They want to portray me as some sort of a terrorist or something, just because I'm a dragon."

"Well, they don't want your species to reproduce, I guess."

There was a small pause, which Eric found awkward. It seemed to him like she was trying to get involved in the situation. He definitely did not want to bring anyone else into it, which he knew would have ended the same way it did to Matt. "Alright... well, I should be, uhh, going now."

Suddenly, she stopped him from turning around and heading out the door. "Ok, look. I heard a lot of banging outside an hour ago, which is what actually woke me up, and made me go check it out. I saw the SWAT car go by, and it's obvious they're looking for you. If you walk out there, or fly somewhere, you'll probably get caught, so you might as well just stay here, right? I mean, it's not like you were in a big hurry."

That final comment reminded him of his goals. He needed to fly to New York, and grab another plane to Europe. Even if Matt was not there to obliterate himself, he was sure he would find another way to get into Mount Gubit. He did not have much time to do so, since the SWAT would probably have been desperately looking for him, possibly to the point of locking down the city from the inside in order to find him. But even if it would have been safer to wait, he did not want to make the same mistake Matt made with Gerald. She seemed trustworthy, and he felt he could trust her, but he did not want to take yet another chance.

"I don't know... I'm going to catch a plane to New York soon, and I should probably take it ASAP. The sooner the better."

"Well, if you stay overnight, I'll be able to bring you to the airport by car tomorrow morning. You can borrow some of my hair products to style your hair, take some of my more masculine shirts, etc, in order to disguise your figure. I even have a spare bedroom upstairs which I keep for guests, and I wouldn't mind letting you sleep there for a night. It's up to you, but I won't snitch to the police or say anything. Frankly, I'm too tired right now to be able to do it anyways."

She seemed sincere with the offer, and looked like she had nothing to hide. After some hesitation, he figured it would be best to stay, for his sake. "Alright, I'll stay."

She gave him a small smile. "Okay then. I'll go set up your bed. Make yourself at home, feel free to eat something, but I'm going to bed soon. What time did you want to leave?"

"I'd say about 7:30 if you don't mind. Thanks."

"No problem. I'll be right back; I'll go prepare your bed."

She then left and went upstairs. He had fallen onto a rooftop, awoken a lady, and in less than five minutes, had an offer to be driven to the airport after staying the night there. He had no clue how he managed to do it, but he figured he might as well have taken advantage of the opportunity, asking no further questions.

The house was not very big, consisting of only a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms and a full bathroom, but was nonetheless very clean. As he headed into the kitchen, he decided to take her food offer seriously. The cupboards were not very full, but there were some Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes, two brands which would never have grown old in his mind. He mindlessly searched the other cupboards for bowls, found one, and scavenged the drawers for a spoon. He then went into the fridge to get some milk. Pouring everything in nearly one coordinated move, he made his way to the small table to gobble everything he could, knowing he would probably not have another chance at doing so for a while. Soon after, the lady came back down the stairs. She glared at Eric for a few seconds, who was eating every spoonful of his cereal like Smarties.

"You don't seem to have eaten in a while, have you?" She let out a little giggle, her eyes seeming to sparkle while she looked at him. For some reason, it reminded him of Veronica.

He swallowed the mouthful he was chewing, and replied with a question of his own. "I never asked you yet, but what's your name?"

"Diane. Diane Jones."

...

"You did what?!", Alan Parker yelled on the phone, in his office, talking to a despised Tom Benson. "How could you let something like this happen? He was our only lead left in this case, and you kill him?"

"I did not kill him, Parker. He died of shock from a panic attack. Our doctors tried to revive him but nothing worked. It's really not my fault if the sucker was so traumatized."

"You shot him twice in the knees! Don't you think that would have set it off?"

Tom was getting frustrated. "Look, I did what was necessary, alright? If I went easy on him, he would have never revealed anything. In fact, shooting him in the kneecaps didn't even help. The guy's mouth was glued shut."

"I don't care what you thought what was necessary! I'm taking back the case again, now that he's in the US. You can do your little espionage if you want, but I'm taking charge. You've really messed up, Benson. I never thought I'd say it, but you messed up."

Alan hung the phone, and rubbed his eyes vigorously. "What am I doing?", he thought to himself. Taking the case again was a very unintelligent move on his part. His team was incompetent, so he would not get very much done. He knew Benson would probably have been laughing in his face over all of the mistakes he would have made, and all the progress he should have made. Even if he did find something, the CIA would probably have been the one to send their squads. In light of this, even after taking the case, the CIA would continue to lead it, while Parker remained #2.

The thoughtful thing the CIA had done for him, however, was to lend over their squads' findings to him, if they were necessary. This proved useful for Alan, who quickly received a call from his team.

"Sir, we need you here to check something out", he said, in a serious tone. "The SWAT came back to do a check-up on Gerald. They found him dead - Eric was here."