“An egg?” I asked. I still wasn’t used to the metallic ring of my voice.

“An egg,” confirmed Alana.

“So let me get this straight, While you were trying to find things to scavenge that we could use, an absolutely giant egg fell from the sky, and then you saw a dove carrying an olive branch land on it. Also, it has my name on it,” I asked.

“That is what happened,” she confirmed.

“Take me to it,” I said, “Murphy, while we’re gone, you’re in charge.”

About an hour later, we reached an egg. It went up to my waist, and definitely had “Alise” written on it. Well, not so much written as it was part of the shell. The egg looked scaly and was heavier than a boulder. After trying to lift it and failing to make it budge, I set my robotic hand on the shell’s surface. I could feel the creature inside-or rather, I could feel the creatures inside. I felt them move. A claw broke through the bottom of the egg, then a beak. I stepped back, instinctively putting a hand to my left, in case the creatures were dangerous. Two of us four leaders of earth had already died, we didn’t need a third.

More pieces of the shell broke away and three little heads peeked out. Then came two wings and four sets of claws. As the shell broke away, a little three-headed dragon broke free. It had a collar around all three heads. “Cerberus” it read. The dragon seemed to keep growing as it exited its shell… and that was because it was. The collar snapped as the dragon grew out of it. The three-headed-dragon was now obscuring the sun from where I stood. I switched to thermal vision. The creature was bright red. All three heads leaned down towards me. There was intense wind for a second as the middle head snorted on me, covering me in snot. It looked like a snapping turtle with some sort of horn. Thermal vision wasn’t the best for details. The head to my left looked like a dragon I had seen in a comic book. It had horns shooting out from the back of it’s head and seemed lizardlike. The final head also looked like a lizard. It’s horns came out of the back of it’s head and curved to face the same way as it’s nose.

After we finished inspecting each other, it wrapped a claw around Alaine and It launched itself into the air, soaring towards our base. I switched back to camera vision. I heard screams from Alaine and people below us as the dragon landed. I ignored them, trying to wriggle free. The dragon stood on it’s hind legs and watched the people running. It seemed confused, and was not attacking. I got an idea.

“CERBERUS! SIT!” I screamed. It obeyed. The head with the curved horns looked at me.

“Cerberus, set us down,” I said to that head. Alaine and I got our feet back on the ground. Alaine scrambled away .Cerberus lied down and slept. This was certainly interesting.

“EVERYONE, IT’S OKAY!!” I yelled into the chaos.

The screams slowly faded into silence. People started gathering. Someone finally broke the silence. A middle aged woman.

“Alise, you’ve brought earth into so many DAMN dangerous situations! Why should we follow you, huh?” She yelled.

“Hey, we would all be enslaved if it weren’t for Alise!” Someone else argued. The yelling continued. I put a hand on my forehead. Then people started punching each other. That’s when I stepped in.

“Guys, chill. I know that I haven’t been able to protect you, but you shouldn’t fight over it. The people should have a voice. Tomorrow, we will hold a vote to decide our leader. Sound good?”

“Then the majority wins? Deal,” The middle aged woman agreed. Everyone else started nodding their heads. “But, who will be in the ballet?”

“You will nominate other people and then we will vote on them. There will be preliminary voting as well to decide the final ballet if there are too many nominees. The people in the ballet will not be able to vote,” I said, “welcome to a democracy.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I stepped onto a pile of rubble. That was the best we could do for a stage. Cerberus was sitting behind me, facing the crowd. Only forty five people had survived the latest calamity.

“Everyone, the nominations will now begin. If you have someone to nominate, please get into a line in front of Alaine,” I gestured to my left, “we will call out those who have been nominated as each person steps up. Alaine will write their name in pen on her clipboard and then we will move on. You will bear witness to the writing to prove it hasn’t been tampered with.” I knew some people would accuse us of tampering. So we did something that it would be absurd to tamper with. We glued the clipboard to a big rock so that it couldn’t move. Only six people ended up on the list. That wasn’t too many, however, Alaine was on the list, and not me. That seemed odd. I thought I had supporters. Well, it didn’t matter anyway. I was tired of making such hard decisions every day. Now I wouldn’t have to. Still, I would do what I could to support whoever won.

“No one else has anyone to nominate?” I paused, in case someone did, “Alright, then we will proceed to the voting stage. Nominees, do you all accept being nominated?” I asked.

“We do,” they said in unison.

“Alrighty then, please spread out in a line facing the crowd,” I suggested. They took my suggestion. “Everyone, please get in a line in front of the person you are voting for. There are forty five people here, cheating will not be tolerated. I am not being counted as I am dead. The people who you vote for will count you and bring their numbers to me. The person to come in first will become our leader and the second will be vice-leader. This will last for four years to the day until the next election. Begin!” People started moving and getting into lines. “Everyone is where they want to be?” I asked, causing me to get a murmur from the crowd.

“Cool, count up your people. When you’re done, double check your number, then come tell me,” I said.

The next few minutes, I found out that Alaine had won by almost double anyone else. She had thirteen votes. All the other peopel had seven or less votes.

“It seems that Alaine got first place with thirteen votes. The second place belongs to Josephine Lewis with seven votes,” I announced.

“Congrats to you both.”

For the next few weeks, we scavenged. Apparently Cerberus didn’t need food or water. She absorbed energy when she was hungry. Usually heat and light energy, but only slightly. Then, Briggs showed up.