4 Doom Boom!!!

Behind him, Jesse squealed.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!"

"Don't be scared! It's just a little hill." Alekai tried to reassure her over the noise of the dirt bike.

"Who's scared? This is fun!"

Alekai swore under his breath. Her idea of fun was being chased by fireballs from the sky.

In the distance, there was a herd of black-and-white Holstein cattle grazing on the grass. As noisy as his bike was, it didn't even faze them.

Alekai steered the bike away from them and hoped that the cows were far enough away so that the fire raining down from the sky would not set them off.

The volley of fireballs were still raining down on them, albeit in sporadic bursts as opposed to a constant stream.

Jesse's protective carapace was still in place although it was badly dinged.

"Can you hold onto this speed for about a minute?" She yelled into his ear.

He winced. "Yes!"

From his rearview mirror, he could she that she had spun around on the seat, thighs gripping the sides of the motorcycle and facing away from him.

How in hell did she manage that on a moving bike over rough terrain?

He barely had time to register this event when she aimed something up at the sky and shot.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Suddenly, a flash appeared from the depths of the blue sky as a tiny white object high above burst into flames and then dissipated.

As far as explosions went, it was nothing grand or spectacular. Certainly nothing like the fireworks he'd ever seen.

"Whooooooo!!!" Jesse screamed. "Die, you bugs!!!"

Bugs?

They were running away from bugs?

She was shooting at bugs?!?!

He slowed the bike as the volleys of fireballs suddenly stopped.

He glanced at the rearview.

Jesse had gone from sitting on the bike facing backwards away from him to standing on the seat behind him, riding it like a surfboard.

"Sit down, you fool! Do you want to die?"

Jesse scrunched up her face.

"It's gonna take more than this single-track vehicle to kill me." But she obliged and sat down.

Once again, she reached around and hugged him, pressing her head into his back.

Alekai grimaced. This girl was something else!

She didn't do that because she was scared of falling off. She just wanted to cop a feel.

Alekai didn't know what to think about that.

The fireballs had ceased with the elimination of the 'bugs' in the sky.

He took them back to the main road and once again, they were riding on the smooth paved highway.

"If you could have just shot them from down here, why did we have to run away from them?"

She laughed like a maniac. "They were too far for my little doom-boom to reach at that time. I had to wait till they got a bit closer."

Doom-boom? Was that the thing she used to shoot them with?

"Where do you want me to take you?" He asked over his shoulders.

Now that he was not gunning it so hard, the bike was not roaring like an incensed tiger.

"Take me to your home."

He pressed his lips together. He'd never taken a girl home before. He wasn't sure if that was something he could even do.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Jesse."

"It's fine. I have to drop something off with Tom anyway."

Alekai's eyes widened. She knew Tom Duncan?

Suddenly, he veered off to the side of the road. There was a tiny grassy clearing in front of a large clump of redwoods. Alekai parked the bike and kicked the stand.

"What are you doing?" Jesse tapped his shoulder.

"We need to talk and it's too difficult for me to hear you while we're moving on the bike."

"Alekai, we need to get to your house."

"The faster you talk, the faster we will get to my house."

"Alekai!" She grabbed his shoulders from behind and shook. "Get us to your house before we get attacked again."

"No!" He turned his head and looked at her.

Up close, the girl's startling blue eyes made him catch his breath. He steeled his resolve.

"Look, I was never chased by anything like those bugs before I met you."

In fact, the worst thing that had ever happened to him was a bit of itchy skin, but he wasn't going to tell her that.

"Once you dropped in on me, nearly bashing my head in, all of a sudden I'm running for my life, bombarded by fire from the sky!"

"Oh it's just those stupid bugs." Jesse waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.

She placed her hands on her hips and stared at him for a moment.

He glared back at her and did not budge. If she didn't tell him what he needed to know, he was not moving another inch from this glade.

"Okay fine." She exhaled with a sharp hiss. "I'll tell you quickly, but you will have to hold the questions until we get to Tom's place. Deal?"

"Fine." Alekai folded his arms over his chest. "This better be good."

"Oh, it's better than good. It's literally out of this world."

"You, Alekai, are a snake. I bet right now, if I stripped you naked, I'd be able to see your snake skin on you somewhere."

"Keep your hands to yourself." He warned.

"Oh relax. I'm not going to tear your clothes off. I'm just saying your inherent gene codes have started firing off."

"How do you know all this?"

"I picked up your bio-signature."

"My…bio-signature?"

"Yes. We all have bio-signatures, and they are all unique to each living being. I only found yours because I was specifically tuning into your individual strain of bio-signature."

"And you just now found me?"

"You just now got strong enough for me to pick up the bio-signature."

"What do you mean strong enough?" Did this short girl in a green bodysuit think he was a weakling?

She laughed. "I'm not talking about your muscles, you lug head. I'm talking about your bio-signature."

He stared at her with vacant eyes.

"When you began to express it, by changing into your snake skin, that was when your bio-signature began to change."

"So you found me because I changed from a man to a snake?"

Jesse laughed and slapped Alekai on the upper arm. "No, silly. You are starting to mature from a neonate snakelet into a full-grown snake."

"I am a man!" He insisted.

She leaned forward and hissed in his face.

"You are a snake."