Ansuya could tell in the pitch change, ever so subtly that she was planning on shifting at the end of her little speech. But this too seemed to cause a shock wave through the assembly. This would be comical if not for the seriousness of the plea for help. The assembly had seen this shift twice before and yet maybe because Amanda was so young that they weren't expecting it from her, a self-stated one of their own? Still the shock over what was to her, pretty mundane, was starting to wear on her patience.

"As to your question of who we may take and recruit," Nicolas said from behind Ansuya, "I may be able to help you with that. Besides there is already a Shape shifter among you, and being how old he is, he's shifted probably more times than I have."

A silence fell around the room and the tribal councilmen and women looked around as if the proverbial viper had gotten into their midst. Their eyes darted back and forth, everyone seemed extremely uncomfortable all of a sudden.

Nicolas smiled in his usual easy way that he had, and pointed to one of the Navajo, "You."

The Navajo president stood up quickly, and for a man his age that was impressive. "Now this has gone on long enough, we have sat here, as your prisoners, we have listened to you and witnessed what no one will ever believe, I find it hard to believe it myself and after tomorrow I might desperately want it to have been a dream so badly I might tell myself that that's all tonight is, a bad dream. But now you accuse my people of being like you? A monster? How could that be?"

"Well, I mean, I guess you could always ask him," Nicolas responded.

The man had a genuine look of fear on his face. Then he took off, running away from the tribal council. He ducked through a door was gone. No one so much as moved to stop him. Him running was proof enough of his guilt, but was his being the way he was reason enough to label his guilt justified?

"Is this what you have come here for? To rip us apart?" One councilman raised his voice with rage. "Take what you want and leave! We won't deal with you or your kind, ever! Leave!"

The leader of the Hopi assembly said quietly, "Perhaps we should talk about all this and figure out what is best for our people…"

"I KNOW what's best for my people, old man, and these people bring nothing but plague and death! I won't treat with them, I won't host them! They are not welcome in my house and they are not welcome on my lands and if they try to take away any of my people, I will shoot them dead. I swear it!" He whipped his body around and faced the collected assembly, "and that goes for any of you as well. If you bring them anywhere near your people or lands, I will kill you for carrying the taint that these creatures most certainly are!"

He all but rushed towards Councilman Clifford Takala, "Give me the Goddamned keys! I'm leaving and I'm taking my people with me!"

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Clifford was at a near panic at suddenly being rushed at like he was kid in an elementary school yard. He reached into his pockets to pull out his keys when a seven foot tall wall of fur was suddenly in front of him.

"I have been more than patient with you," Aceso snarled in her deep soprano voice. "I have had to deal with insult after insult being here in the human world." The word, human, dripped from her lips like acid. "I will not put up with it any longer. Now sit down or I will remove you from your legs so you don't have a choice." Aceso leaned in very close and whispered to the shocked still man, "Sit…down."

The man seemed to have taken leave of his senses as he turned around jerkily and walked off balance back to his seat and sat down woodenly in his chair.

"We will, of course, give you some time to deliberate among yourselves," Ansuya said. No one noticed when the woman had shifted back into her human self but she stood tall with her brown skin and long black hair. She gazed evenly from her brown eyes out at the assembly. "Whatever you decide, we will abide by the decision. We have come as friends and we would leave as such. If you choose not to help us, we will honor your decision and go in peace."

None of the assembly members moved. It was Ansuya who gestured to Clifford and walked the pack up the stairs to wait for Clifford to unlock and open the door. Amanda and Aceso had shifted back into their natural forms and the group walked out alone into the desert night sky. The doors were closed behind them and they all could hear the rustling of chains behind the steel doors.

Ansuya had not really anticipated what had happened and she hadn't exactly figured that the native people here would openly accept and agree to join them just out of course. But what she hadn't expected was what Nicolas had done.

She turned to the young Scout, "And just what the hell was that in there, Nicolas?" She asked much harsher than she had intended, but she didn't care. "You threw a match on a pile of straw and kindling, did you not expect a flame?" She heaved a sigh and asked, "How did you know? Was it a guess? Have you just ruined a man's life for your own vanity?"

"First of all," Nicolas replied tersely, "No, I know he's a Shape shifter. I pointed him out cause I wanted to start something. Can they really claim innocence when one of their own is a Shape shifter too?"

Ansuya shook her head, "I can't believe you. You could have ruined everything with that stunt. And what do you mean you knew?"

Nicolas smiled in that infuriatingly easy way of his, "And here I thought you wanted me to get more practice and get better with my newly uncovered Scout abilities. Unless of course that was a bunch of horseshit too?" Nicolas ran his fingers through his short brown hair, "I've been practicing and getting better. I knew what he was the second we walked into that building. It's a pretty cool trick, by the way."

"Your abilities aren't cheap parlor tricks," Ansuya said flatly. "As it is, well, what's done is done. We just have to wait and see what the council says about it all."

She turned towards Amanda, "and you," she said in a motherly voice, "What was that? Trying to shame the natives by pointing out your own heritage?"

"Ansuya, let it go," William said calmly. "As you said, what's done is done and now all we can do is wait. Interrogating each of us for our actions won't change anything, will it help or hurt our chances? I don't know but for now, let it go."

Ansuya hadn't been talked to like that in a very long time. But she knew better then to push a moot point. William was right in his own way, what's done is done. She looked up towards the heavens and studied the various constellations. The night sky here was so much clearer than anything she had ever experienced, and cold. The rest of the pack went to go sit around a picnic table. She went to join them.

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