Perry's familiar? It looks vaguely like a pigeon, except when it turns into a RABID SCREAMING BLOOD EAGLE OF DOOM.

Or rather, when it gets hungry and starts whining, and then it just looks silly.

It's name is Floober.

Aviator familiars work a bit like psychic carrier pigeons, honestly; they transmit orders from HQ or the capital or the Academy or wherever. If a familiar dies, the Aviator will be quite despondent and sick for a while; if the Aviator dies, the familiar dies. There's a two waay life link thing going, but a familiar draws on such a small amount of life force that it isn't fatal to the Aviator. An Aviator can choose to get a new familiar, retire, or to go rogue. If they retire, they hand in their elitas and their uniform, and go home to live out their lives as basketweavers, or fishermen. If they go rogue, they hand in their elitas and...do rogue things. Some of them are pirates. Some of them are freelance messengers/mercenaries, what have you. Some of them are Evil and Enemies of All that is Good. (working on a plot, could you tell?) Rogue Aviators that belong to a group of some sort will make their own elitas to identify themselves...there are a few perfectly respectable mercenary companies that fly under alternate elitas, but there are also a few Rogue armies that are little more than..Evil. (stretching for ideas here, with the whole plot thing...) The most notorious are those with bat winged elitas; most other alternate elitas don't have wings, or have bird wings, but in a different shape.

Anyway. Perry was voted Least Likely to go Rogue in his class at the Academy; the boy's a fanatic. Floober is quite lazy and rather fat; he isn't able to talk, per se, but he can communicate very clearly with Perry. All familiars have a parrot like ability to say their own name and the name of their partner, so Floober's vocabulary is limited to variations on "Floober!" "Perry!" and "Flooberry!" when he's confused. When communicating instructions from the capital, he does some sort of telepathic thing, or he pops into the aethral current for a moment and comes back with an actual, physical message. Useful things, familiars. An Aviator chooses an egg when he receives his Fourth Class elitas (Fifth class elitas are student wings; even humans can wear them) and then takes care of it until it hatches. Bonding with a familiar is supposed to be a very private thing; the first person the familiar sees is its partner, and the first word it hears is its name. Perry, unfortunately, was visiting home when Floober hatched, during a Yule celebration. He was having dinner, in fact, surrounded by his dozen or so little sibblings. One of them happened to yell "Floober!" at someone else at the exact moment the egg hatched and the rest, as they say, is history.

Perry still hasn't forgiven his little sister, though she's very repentant and has promised to let Perry name her familiar when she gets one. Perry thinks that's all well and good, but given his sister's temperament, she'd name her familiar Fluffykins Snooglywoop the Third on her own. And being able to name her familiar I'm With Stupid doens't make up for the fact that he still has to call Floober by name when sending replies back to the Academy.

I've found that the best way to find out how my characters work is to let them talk; I stuck Trent and Perry in the same room and told them to play nice, and I found out all sorts of silly things about Perry. Trent doesn't like to talk about himself, though he does like to look condescendingly down his nose at Perry and call him a silly child.

"So, what's the familiar's name?"
"None of your business."
"Geez, touchy, much? I was just askin'."
"FLOOBER!" *sound of bird launching itself at Trent's head*
"Hello there, Floober. Want a peanut?"
"Flooberfloober!"
"I'll take that as a yes..."
"Damn it, Floob!"
"Don't get mad at your familiar, Perry. He's just bein' friendly, unlike some people I could name..."
"Floo..." *nibblenibbleCHOMP*
"Watchit, you flying rat, that's my finger!"
"Nice work, Floober."
"Rabid little buggers, you lot are..."