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Deza has a minion!

Protect the Dahllie




Deza
Legacy Name: Deza


The Nostalgic Ontra
Owner: Pureflower

Age: 6 years, 4 months, 5 days

Born: November 23rd, 2017

Adopted: 6 years, 4 months, 5 days ago

Adopted: November 23rd, 2017

This pet has been nominated for the Pet Spotlight!

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The Protector

The man sitting beside her...if he truly was a man...was more intriguing than a thousand intergalactic viewscreen channels. He'd given his name as Luno. It could be a fake identity or a dimensional alias.

Or this oddball with hair like dandelion wishes could be telling the truth.

That would be a novelty. No travel-weary port hopper told the truth if they could avoid it.

He had known her mission...to save all of Earth's children taken by the elusive Snatchers. He had known that she would give anything...anything...to see those under her protection brought safely home. He'd offered her a carrot too juicy to dismiss. A lead on her current case that would bring two stolen girls safely home. Trusting anyone these days could get you a laser blast between the shoulders but there was something about him, a certain innocence usually lost by the age of puberty.

Perhaps she was a fool but he reminded her so much of her first rescue, she'd decided to give him a chance.

Memories of Toby came unbidden. She temporarily lost sight of the passing stars behind a film of tears.

Deza's First Case

He huddled inside an abandoned Hover Shuttle Tunnel, shivering and trying to squeeze his body into a tighter ball. For two days he'd sloshed through trash overflowing into the overwhelmed platform gutters, trying not to meet the eyes of any travelers and taking his meals from the dumpsters behind space port roadside restaurants with flashy neon signs...

Stranger would find him sooner or later. Stranger knew everything.

He'd known how to trick the school principal with fake Agency creds and a tragic story about Toby's mother being in the hospital. He'd forged a note so perfectly that even Toby was convinced the writing was his mom's. Stranger had even known that Peanut Butter Blasters were Toby's favorite cookies.

The cookies didn't taste right but the "officer" was so kind and concerned that Toby managed to choke down two, wishing for a tall glass of milk. He immediately began to feel sleepy. The gentle hum of the ship's engine was so soothing...

He woke in a dark place. His short arms brushed the sides of his canvas prison if he stretched out his fingers all the way. Three tiny holes let in pencil-thin rays of sunlight. Laser blasts? Bullet holes? Toby's mom never let him watch anything scary...only boring educational shows. That didn't mean he didn't know stuff. He and his friends were always trying to sneak in when a sleeping father or older brother wasn't paying attention. They loved to play at being brave Agency Captains or universal bounty hunters hunting down some other-worldly enemy straight out of a comic book.

Toby had never met his father but he'd seen pictures. His father had been a pilot. Not the flashy kind in movies but...it still wasn't every man who'd be trusted to haul cargo across seven galaxies.

Stranger didn't return until full night. Clouds covered the face of the planet's four moons, leaving Toby in total darkness. He blinked sleepily at the glare of an ice blue lantern. A warm bowl of soup was placed in his hands. Based on the color of the meat chunks, the creature it came from was definitely not native to Earth. Toby attacked the contents, scooping up chunks of carrot and slimy purple meat with his fingers, oblivious to the broth that dribbled down to stain the collar of his school shirt.

Stranger watched Toby eat, saying nothing. He might have been anything from a construction worker to a pro wrestler with his thick neck, bulging muscles and bald head. A faded red bandana hid the lower half of his face.

They glided for hours. Though it was way past his bedtime, Toby didn't feel at all tired. His eyes lingered on each passing neon sign and lit skyboard as Stranger's skimmer took them two hundred miles in a matter of hours.

Toby soon grew tired of trying to spot any features aside from deep space broadcast poles. To either side of the skyway were flat fields that wouldn't offer much to look at in broad daylight. Toby's eyes darted to Stranger and away. There was something in that man's face that would quicken the heart of an ex-Marine.

The car finally came to rest in a ghost town that even the feral dogs had given up for dead. Stranger yanked open the passenger-side door, allowing Toby to step out. Somewhere in the near distance, a pair of dog-like creatures began to bark and snarl.

Where could the boy run? The distant rock formation with its yawning black mouth-caves? The sludge choked river with only a single, rickety plank bridge? The main street was a horror show of industrial buildings long abandoned. Sightless eyes with shards of glass for pupils glared accusingly in the unnatural light of Stranger's lantern.

Stranger kept gentle pressure on Toby's arm, steering him in the right direction. The old rocket parts factory had been the heart of this town before the discovery of that wonder metal known as infinium. Now it was a rotten tooth in the half-submerged gums of a giant the desert couldn't quite manage to bury.

*****

Gloria had been pretty once. Losing her husband had turned her hair gray at just thirty-five. Losing her son to a heartless kidnapper had added wrinkles that no amount of beauty cream could completely hide.

"I apologize for the mess, Agent..."

Deza looked around at the spotless living room, thinking of her own garbage heap of an apartment. "Please, call me Deza."

Gloria sipped her tea. Deza tried to do the same, nearly choking on leaf-flavored water. They both jumped at the sound of a doorbell. Gloria's hand flew to her mouth, Deza's to her regulation blaster.

Gloria left the room and returned, clutching the mail in one hand. She tapped a fingernail on the cover of a glossy toy catalogue.

"Toby's been asking for one of these miniature skimmers for months. They're advertised all the time and you know how kids are with the latest toy." Her eyes began to tear up. "I've been putting a little aside each paycheck, to get it for him as a Christmas present."

"I'm going to find him, Gloria, but I need your help. You won't talk to reporters. I don't blame you for that, but I'm asking you to talk to me. I don't have an agenda. Honestly, if my boss knew I was here, he'd chain me to my desk then lock me in a cage with motion sensors. I'm supposed to just sit and comb through file notes like a good little trained monkey. I won't sit idle because I know what the Snatchers are like. They tried to Snatch me when I was fifteen." She paused "They failed."

Gloria hesitated, then crossed to the bookcase beside the fireplace. "If you really think this will be helpful, then by all means, take a look. Like I told you over the phone, it's just an old scrapbook. It's nothing fancy and I can't say I kept up with it much when Jeff died."

Deza couldn't have said why the book interested her and as she began to flip through the pages, her eyes glazed over. Her instincts were rarely wrong but she'd run the last forty-eight hours on little more than coffee and a couple of quick-heat Black Hole Burritos. She always got like this when she knew time was running short. The only people she hated more than Snatchers were Snatchers who got away with murder.

She was about to close the cover and hunt down a pitcher of ice water to pour over her head when she spotted a newspaper clipping that set off alarm bells.

She'd been told he died in a face-off with senior agents two months ago. This article placed his death date two years prior. Not the boy's father...the reckless pilot whose landing was so horribly botched.

Just how many times could one man die before he stayed dead?

*****

Toby stared in dazed wonder at the lines that made up the workforce of Stranger's factory.

Children, every one. All stared intently at their work. There were no silly songs, no idle chatter to break the silence. The sound of laughter had never lightened the mood in this chilly place, despite the toys it produced.

The children were making dolls.

Some worked to align plastic joints at just the right angle so they would bend realistically despite the glue holding them in place. Those with small fingers sewed colorful dresses and real denim suspenders. Still others assembled shipping boxes and stacked the finished products in neat rows.

Toby found himself among the assemblers. The work wasn't bad and Stranger fed them well enough, yet not one of the children dared to speak.

Never one to be unfriendly, Toby tried to break the ice with the girl to his right. "Hi, I'm Toby. What's your name."

She stared at him out of the corner of her eye, slowly shaking her head from side to side. The boy to his right wouldn't even look at him. A hand tapped Toby's shoulder.

Stranger stood there, holding the leashes of two huge black creatures that looked like a cross between a mastiff and a giant squid.

"No talking. This ain't an amusement park. These here ain't ponies to give you rides. They prowl this town at night, when all good little girls and boys should be in bed. They ever catch you out there in the dark..."

The dogs growled low in their throats as Stranger chuckled.

*****

Toby's escape chance came through sheer dumb luck.

He'd bunked with a boy named Mikey. All the children were bolder before lights-out. They knew Stranger would be busy in the office printing shipping labels for the orders they'd completed that day. As long as they were quiet when he did his final head-count, they could get away with the occasional whispered phrase.

That's how Toby learned Mikey's name and that he was one of the oldest boys left.

"Nobody knows what happens to the teenagers." Mikey spoke in a hushed whisper. "Patty says Stranger lets them go on the edge of town then sets the dogs loose. If they can make it across the bridge, he lets them live."

Toby was ready to swear those dogs had their bed right beneath his own window. He would wake a few times a night to their growls and whines.

One night he even had a nightmare that one of the dogs had figured out how to open doors. Its tentacles waved over his bed as it stared down. There was a red glint in its small eyes and a blob of slobber fell from the corner of its mouth to strike his cheek.

He'd woken in the morning, disgusted to find he'd been sleeping in a puddle of his own drool, like a baby. He went to shake Mikey awake but the older boy only moaned and rolled over.

Mikey wasn't on the assembly line that day. He didn't join the group for spaghetti in the evening. He was still on his bunk when Toby entered their shared room. Stranger followed Toby in.

He picked Mikey up gently and carried him from the room. The children could hear the sound of Stranger's engine as it started up, then faded into the distance.

Stranger had never left them alone in the evening. A few of the boldest children sat up in their bunks. They could loot the fridge for the really good snacks. Better yet, they could hack Stranger's computer and put out a message to the Intergalactic Squad.

Seven children crept out onto the factory floor. Both dogs sat guarding the exit doors. Low rumbling growls increased in volume as the two children in front began to creep forward.

"I bet their orders are to keep us in. They don't know a computer from a corn chip. As long as nobody gets too close, we'll be alright. Maybe we could even bribe 'em with food."

Stevie's words were met with cheers. As he'd predicted, the dogs remained seated as long as the children didn't make a straight line for the door.

A girl named Darla found a chunk of ham left over from supper two nights ago. She tossed it toward the dogs, flinching as they growled. They didn't even sniff the morsel though it landed almost on top of one dog's tentacle.

Stevie quickly gave up on guessing Stranger's password. What if he somehow got an alert warning him of the login attempts?

They hadn't given a thought to the window above the office desk. It was just wide enough for a determined six-year-old to squeeze through.

*****

Toby had been forced to abandon the tunnel. The rain continued to fall until it was up to his waist. Keeping the rain off his head wasn't worth the risk of drowning.

Could squid-dogs track in the rain? Toby had no idea. The steady droplets sounded like the click of claws on pavement. Toby glanced over his shoulder every few seconds.

He nearly fainted at the sight of lights fast approaching. He threw himself to the ground, acquiring a new layer of mud.

The skimmer zoomed past without even slowing. To the driver, Toby looked like just another clod of dirt worked loose by the rain.

As he resumed his walk, Toby began to cry. He wanted his mom. He wanted his Super Gamer Console. Most of all, he wanted to sleep in his own bed tonight.

Another car coming from behind. This one would probably pass him too.

Only this one didn't.

*****

Wendell. What a crappy name.

Deza had the scent now. It had been simple, when she'd known what to look for.

She had first encountered Wendell Briggs when she was a starry-eyed cadet with fresh polish still on her badge. He'd been a small-time cradle robber back then. He'd also been ruggedly handsome, allowing him to meet single mothers and trick them into letting their guards down after one too many drinks.

The accident that left him badly scarred had been coincidence. His targeting of the son of the killed driver had been anything but.

Fortunately, Wendell was very much a creature of habit. Instead of lines of cribs, her team found lines of children. Bo Peep Squad had been forced to kill the squid-dogs.

Between Wendell's surly account and the statements of the rescued children, it hadn't been that hard to determine what direction Toby must have run.

Deza got out of the skimmer slowly. "It's okay, Toby. My name is Agent Deza Daybright. I've come to take you home."

He stood there shivering, afraid to believe her.

"The man with the bandana is in jail. He's going to stay in jail for a very long time. Your friends at the factory are safe. We're doing everything we can to reunite them with their families."

Toby took a step toward her. "What about Mikey?"

Her stone-faced silence was answer enough. Toby didn't try to run when she approached. Deza caught the boy before he could fall, wrapping him in strong, protective arms. She whispered over and over that everything would be alright.

It was the kind of empty lie that worked on a scared child. It would prove false three years later, when Toby was Snatched once again.

*****

She'd been a fool, thinking a small fish like Wendell Briggs could be anything more than a puppet dancing on a more powerful player's strings.

Three years after her first victory, she'd stood at the side of Toby's grave while Gloria spat at her.

No one was safe until the Snatchers were identified, tracked down and destroyed.

If the stranger sitting beside her really could get her to the people responsible for the Snatcher program, she'd give him a lot more than a seat on her ship.

The Protector Crew

Luno

I don't trust easily. Don't break my heart (or my ship) and I might consider liking you.

Grel

I'll shove you into a black hole at the first given opportunity, you disgusting Snatcher.

Culum

I'll help Luno find a way to defeat you. There's no way I'm letting that boy fall victim to such an overblown cosmic fart.

Cirus

I know everybody believes your kind are a myth but I still believe in angels.

Diadem

You went and stole a few extra portions when they were handing out evil, didn't you?

Skula

Crossing my fingers every dog in the universe will use you for a chew toy.

Solarin

Oh Captain, my captain...that purple towel you wore on your last surprise viz call was just your color. (No, I'm not calling to report another national monument that I need you to sweep under the rug for me. Whatever would give you that idea?)

Mike

Your food has been my only reason to keep going on many a day. Especially when they're serving "Space Surprise" at the Agency cafeteria.

Galex

Wait...Solarin has a brother?

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