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A heavy thump on the landing platform outside-- audible even above the howling of the storm that was currently blustering through Noctua-- alerted the busy Minder to a new arrival. Sure enough, when she turned from giving the last bit of rat to the last squalling hatchling, she could just make out a hulking shape through the rain. The surprisingly loud landing should mean that the Gatherer she was expecting had found all of the supplies she had asked for... but after a moment, the Minder realized that the Sentinel on the platform was not the Gatherer at all. It was, in fact, a huge male; a pale form hunched against the driving rain that was moving awkwardly towards the protected shelter of the Minder's tree.

Wary, the Minder hopped over to meet the huge male as he pushed his way in out of the rain. The male looked up, and the Minder's feathers flattened in surprise-- and recognition.

"Sir! Never thought I'd see you in a place like th--"

She was abruptly cut off. Sleet, second-in-command to The Brigadier himself, shook the rain sharply from his feathers and clacked his beak twice. "There's no time to talk. Here!" Shifting, he used his Will to bring forward an object he'd been holding awkwardly under his feathers-- a perfectly white egg. "This egg was found near the outskirts in an abandoned territory. No sign of the parents. It's almost cold. Will you take it?"

"Of course! But--"

Sleet, already turning, did not let her finish. "Send for me when it hatches. I cannot stay longer." Before the Minder could stop him, he was back outside, and his pale form had launched off the platform and disappeared into the driving rain. Few Sentinels could fly in a storm like this, but the Elites paid very little attention to weather when they had a job to do.

Clucking fussily, the Minder turned her attention back to the strange egg she had been left with. Abandoned eggs were certainly not unheard of, and most Minders were prepared to take them; a moment later she had moved the surprisingly small egg to a nest and had settled herself over it. The egg would be brooded with the same care she showed all her charges, of course. Still, the Minder could not help but worry.

...In all of her experience, she had never seen a pure white Sentinel egg.

The storm that has been blowing in all evening has finally hit the heart of Noctua, and it has hit hard. Even the most ancient of the forest's great trees is shuddering faintly from the howling wind that rips through their upper branches in the canopy high above. It is quieter below, although fat drops of rain splatter down through the thick leaves that shield the core of the forest from the worst of the storm.

The sturdy landing platform outside of Citrine's hollow is not unoccupied; in fact, through the storm, a few shapes are standing guard. Sleet is there, shifting uncomfortably and glaring up into the trees every so often. He was summoned by a frantic Chirop over an hour ago. "The egg is hatching!" was all the Chirop said, mimicking the Minder's tone perfectly, before fluttering off into the forest. A moment later, Sleet was on his way.

Beside Sleet is a slightly smaller but broader figure, and it is standing perfectly still. A single red eye watches the shadowed entrance to the Minder's tree, senses alert for the faintest sound from within. The Brigadier stands solidly beside his young lieutenant, silent. He does not look pleased.

Finally, higher up in the branches, Fletcher watches-- she somehow arrived before Sleet did, obviously alerted to the hatching by some alternate (and more efficient) method. She, too, is silent.

None of the three watchers make any move to violate the sanctity of the Minder's tree. Not even The Brigadier would disturb a nesting female helping a newborn chick out of the egg. It just Isn't Done-- and if it was done, Citrine would be well within her rights to defend her broodling to the death. And so the three wait outside, for some sign that their vigil is finished.

They don't have to wait too long. Suddenly, a low rasping squeak-- a sound no healthy Sentinel chick would ever make-- issues from the hollow of the tree. It repeats a moment later. Sleet glances at the Brigadier, who narrows both eyes. Above them, Fletcher's ear-tufts flatten.

"Shhhrrrrreeeek-k!"

At the third call, the Brigadier starts forward, his talons clicking on the landing platform. Something isn't right, and although he's never intruded on a brooding female before, this is strange enough to send him through the entrance of the hollow tree and into the space beyond. "Minder," he grates, upon seeing Citrine. He takes a step further and-- ...and stops, his good eye fixed on the soggy little form sitting in the sticky remains of its egg.

"Shhrkkk-k-k!"

When there is no sound of fighting after the Brigadier enters, Sleet follows warily and is almost bowled over by Fletcher, who suddenly appears beside him and shoves her way inside the tree.

"Shhrrreeek-kk-k!"

The low, alien call is so foreign that for a moment, Sleet doesn't realize where it's coming from. Fletcher, however, does. The crazy Watcher's response is so violent that even the Brigadier swivels his head, his attention torn from the awkward little hatchling that came out of the mysterious egg. Fletcher's feathers fan out; she lowers her head, pupils contracting, and hisses-- long and loud. She clacks her beak sharply once, then hisses again, and the hiss twists into words: "Kill it!" Her attention is riveted on the hatchling, and there is something close to fear in her eyes.

The hatchling, oblivious to all the attention, squalls desperately for food. "Skk-kk-kk!!" It sits awkwardly, with its down feathers still damp and fluffed at odd angles. It doesn't understand why it hasn't been fed yet-- or why it's so cold. It can't tell that at least three of the four adults present are looking at it with varying degrees of horror and confusion.

It doesn't know it isn't a Sentinel.

When the tiny thing shrieks again, the Brigadier rouses at the foreign sound and, after shooting a vicious glare at Sleet, who shrinks away, he turns with heavy dignity to Citrine. There is some regret in his rough voice, yes, but it's for the Minder's feelings... not for the squalling chick.

"...The Watcher is right. It must be killed."

"Kill it?! You had me hatch this chick only to kill it?!" The golden Minder couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"You'll kill a defenseless hatchling because it's different from us?!" Citrine moved quickly, this was her hollow – her sanctuary to raise hatchlings. She would not see it murdered in front of her very eyes just for surviving. Bright feathers raised as she stepped between those which threatened the very life she had worked so hard to see come into the world. Gold eyes glared accusingly at the would-be murderers and the coward who took no stand to protect the very egg he had brought to her.

"This hatchling has done nothing to you, it cannot even defend itself! You gave the egg to me to hatch, for me to see survive even in the harsh conditions it came to me in, and now you want me to just stand by and watch as... as you kill it?! NO!" The hatchling was hers, her fosterling, her chick - and she would protect it! Citrine hissed as she eyed the larger Sentinels, knowing full well that it would be her own life as well as the hatchling's on the line. "I've incubated this chick, helped it come from its shell into this world - I'll not let you strike him!" Her wings fanned out protectively as she snapped at Fletcher. "He is not yours to kill!"

As seemingly out-of-place as she is, Fletcher seems to have no qualms about making her opinion heard. She steps forward, then back, then rocks in place, talons clutching and scraping reflexively at the floor, her posture still defensive. "You-- No, no. No. No, you don't understand! This... this thing, this Spectre," she hisses, the last word dribbling from her beak as if it were too filthy to speak normally, "This monster, this this this th-- IT HAS TO DIE. It it i-i- there will be more and and--"

With a sharp clack of his beak the Brigadier puts an end to Fletcher's spastic rant. He spares another sharp look for Sleet, silently instructing his lieutenant to watch the entrance, and then returns his full attention to Citrine. The chick he ignores, for the moment, as it continues to shriek for food. For a meal that he intends to make sure that it never has.

"Minder," he begins, then pauses before speaking again, "Citrine. You must understand. It is not to die for what it has done, but for what its kind has done to our Clan. It has no future here." Fletcher continues to mutter to herself and hiss in the background as he steps forward, his voice lowered in sympathy. "You do not need to watch."

"Clan? No, Brigadier. The wars are long since past – I had thought our Clan had moved past that time. This chick deserves the right to live; if it is the last of its kind then what harm could it do to survive? Even still – think of the possibility of an alliance. Proper raising and it would be one of us, perhaps not in appearance, but in values and heart." Citrine chose her words carefully, her attentions torn between the squalling of the hungry chick and those before her.

"And if this hatchling means that the long dead Clan has returned, we could have it act as a scout for us into enemy territory. It doesn't have to die when we can make use of him." The minder did her best to keep the desperate plea from her voice as she kept her stance.

"Let me keep the chick and I'll raise him as one of us."

The Brigadier's expression hardens as he listens to the Minder, but he remains silent; he does not look at the still-squalling chick. The silence stretches after Citrine has finished her plea; a silence broken only by Fletcher's mumbling undertone and Sleet's uncomfortable shifting.

The Spectres slaughtered Sentinels mercilessly in the Great Clan Wars, using tactics that even the feathered beasts from the Above would disdain. The Brigadier lost two of his own fledglings to their wicked talons before they came of age... as well as his mate. And Fletcher-- well, they were responsible for her current state, and countless more atrocities than he cared to remember. And here sits Citrine, young and idealistic and full of passion, speaking of innocence and justice with no idea of the butchery caused by the species she now protects behind fanned wings.

...But what of it? Sighing quietly, the Brigadier shuts his good eye for a moment. He isn't a fool-- he knows that the wars are long over. The other Clans, including the one this wayward chick belongs to, are dead and gone-- or at the very least so beaten back that it would take generations upon generations for them to become even a mild threat. And the Sentinels that fought in the Great Clan Wars are aging. The wars, and most memory of the wars, will die along with them, and will be carried along only in Bard-song. Citrine is right. The chick can be used. And if it can't be used? Well, no matter. Its existance will be appropriately painful. It will face the stares and gibes and questions of others; it will be teased mercilessly by its fellow fledglings for its strange appearance... and it will probably die anyway in the harsh winter to come. Where is the harm in allowing Citrine to mind the chick until then? The female's behaviour makes it very clear that any attempt to harm the chick will be met with force, as is Citrine's right... and the Brigadier has no interest, for all his tactical genius and physical strength, to fight a broody female; even a young one. It'd be a good way to lose his other eye.

By this point, the silence has stretched into minutes. He clears his throat before he speaks, and when he does, the words are low and slow and pitched for Citrine only. "...You shame me with your words," the Brigadier rumbles. "And you have won the life of your hatchling." He turns now to look at the chick, who has finally fallen silent and is staring blearily up at the shapes of the adults around it. Turning from it and from Citrine, the old bird speaks with regret as he moves towards the exit. "But you are young, and not tempered by war. In time, perhaps, you will understand why it would have been better to let me kill the chick...."

There is a sudden explosion of movement-- Fletcher bursts forward towards Citrine as though she means to take the chick herself, but brings herself just as suddenly to an abrupt halt and then crouches, keening loudly. "NO! You can't possibly know what you've DONE!" Her head swivels miserably, as though trying to guard against invisible ghosts that lurk around her. "They-- they will... t-t-they just-- spread everywhere, EVERYWHERE, and all of the h-h-hatchli--" Casting one last glassy stare at both Citrine and the chick, the crazed Watcher twists around on herself, talons scraping furrows into the wood at her feet, and launches herself past the Brigadier and Sleet towards the exit. Another scrabbling bound, and she's gone into the night. Her keening drifts back eerily to the tree, and then is lost to distance.

A ringing silence follows Fletcher's departure. The Brigadier twists his head back to stare at Citrine once more. "As you have petitioned for the life of this chick, I hold you responsible for it until it is old enough to offer itself to the Clan." The old male sighs, then turns and moves off towards the landing platform. " And it will be a heavy responsibility. Good luck." A moment later (and with much less noise) he, too, is gone into the night.

Sleet is left behind, crouched awkwardly near the entrance to the hollow. Despite his rank, he does not fully understand what has just happened. But he does know that he should have tried to protect that chick... and he knows that Citrine also knows that. Guilty, the large male approaches the nest, stopping and holding himself as small as he can the very moment the female becomes defensive. Eyes on her feet, the Elite leader swallows before he speaks. "Minder-- ...Citrine. I... apologize." His beak opens and closes once, as though there is something he wants to say but can't quite manage it. Finally, he glances up at her, and speaks more strongly. "You have my word that I will do what I can to help you." So he does feel some responsibility for the egg after all. "I will protect you both." So saying, the lieutenant backs away and stands up tall, nodding once more to Citrine and taking a final glance at the chick before leaving the hollow and the Minder's tree.

The chick, which had fallen silent, now turns a wobbly head towards Citrine. It peeps pathetically-- and that, at least, is a more familiar noise. It is now, for better or worse, Citrine's chick... and the newest denizen of Noctua.