ShinyDecidueye » Hibernal Den » Hunapo

Hunapo

(#79738994)

This is Why We Have the Rules, Electric Boogaloo

Familiar

Greenroot Janustrap

Energy: 50/50

Personal Style

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

1.28 m

Wingspan

1.22 m

Weight

1.75 kg

Genetics

Algae
Web (Veilspun)

Hatchday

Jul 25, 2022
(1 year)

Breed

Adult
Veilspun

Eye Type

Nature
Unusual

Level 1 Veilspun

EXP: 0 / 245

STR

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Offspring

none

Biography

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE THE RULES - PART 2

Part 1

“...”

“...”

“...Maria,” Regina asked slowly as she took the scene in. “What the hell is going on?”

Regina was swearing, Magnolia noted, so she decided not to interrupt and instead found herself some mental popcorn. This opportunity was far too good to pass up.

And so, the two of them watched, completely nonplussed, as Maria dodged a blast of distinctly violet red fire from what seemed to be a robotic fire-breathing raptor chasing her around. Fortunately, her scarf was intact and fireproof, but judging from the soot on it this had been going on for a while.

“...I found the robotic fire-breathing raptor Dawn Jr lost,” Maria somehow deadpanned as she ducked to avoid the small geyser from the broken plumbing. Her apparel was already sopping wet.

Regina blinked. “I can see that,” she responded dryly, then blinked as she heard someone scream in the distance. Whatever, she could deal with that later. “Do mind your step, and don’t trip or fall."

"If you tell me that you’ve fallen and you can't get up, I will laugh.”

That last sentence came from Magnolia. The Nocturne rolled her eyes and hopped out of the way of the raptor’s swipes, momentarily slipped on the flagstone slick with water, then caught her footing and neatly pivoted out of the way of the raptor’s lunge.

“Do you want help?”

“Is water wet?” Maria snapped. The raptor got temporarily blasted away by the geyser, but evidently it was waterproof because it just bounced right back.

“Well... since the word wet is defined as being saturated with a substance, it is impossible for water to be wet. Water can saturate things and can also be saturated by other substances, but it is impossible for it to be wet,” Magnolia answered flatly.

“Also, you do know that saying ‘Yes’ takes less syllables, right?” Regina tilted her head such that the stray blast of violet flames went wide past her feathers.

“Please, O Mighty Uncrowned Queen of Eternal Stars, do assist me in this arduous task of reining in this vicious wild beast,” Maria snarked as her scarf attempted to restrain the robot.

It failed rather miserably. Maria looked on in abject desperation.

“...fine.”

~0~

“Abort, abort, abort!” Regina uncharacteristically yelled as the raptor successfully scored a gash on her left forearm. “Can’t we lead it somewhere and trap it in there?”

“Good idea!” Maria yelled back, and so Magnolia forced the front door open. They ran past a startled Ava and up a few flights of stairs, then proceeded to lead the thing in circles.

“Where are we going?”

“I was following you!”

“Why? I thought you knew this place better than me!”

“What are you doing?”

This one came from Ava, who was jogging at a leisurely pace but somehow keeping up with the three of them and effortlessly dodging all of the incoming attacks.

“Is it not obvious?” Regina snarked while Magnolia focused on not tripping on the floor and potentially getting mauled by the raptor. Again.

“Well, I would lead it into a room that’s able to be secured from the outside,” Ava commented, throwing a quick glance at the raptor and doing a short hop to the left. She didn’t even sound out of breath.

“How are you doing this?” Magnolia panted.

“I don’t skip leg day.”

She sputtered, but continued with, “So, where are we going?”

“Well… I know just the place,” Maria admitted. “Yeah, it’s perfect for what I’m thinking, and… never mind.”

~0~

“That’s the raptor mostly dealt with,” Regina observed as Maria gleefully led it into Dawn Jr's suite.

“This is revenge for putting chilli powder in my omelette!” the young Nocturne declared before bolting. Well, it was for the best, since the princess had just turned the corner and was taking in the scene.

“...what?”

“Well, we found the robot fire-breathing raptor,” Magnolia answered, gesturing with a claw. “It broke my fountain, then it injured me, we were forced to flee from it, and ran into your room.”

Ava gave her an imperceptible nod of approval. Huh. If even she was finding this entertaining, she didn’t comment. Still, the phantom gashes stung like hell, though she had already cleaned the wounds and healed her arms.

“...thanks for finding it.”

“By the way, why is the fire that colour?”

“Rubidium chloride for the fun of it, I took inspiration from my mother. Can't let her beat me in the aesthetics department.”

Ah. So they were going to just ignore how the raptor was swinging from the ceiling light in the room, sure, why not. Magnolia snickered, but Regina had the sinking suspicion that she was trying to suppress a full-blown guffaw.

"Less laughter, more sympathy," Regina grumbled.

~0~

Regina had no words. This was the cause of the screaming?

“So… Zia accidentally spilled some potion… but it went out of hand,” Polaris lamely waved a claw in the direction of… everything.

“Went out of hand” was a massive understatement. Food of every colour, texture and description was coating the walls, furniture, and floor of the dining hall. Even the white marble ceiling was barely visible under the impromptu salmagundi, and Regina neatly stepped out of the way to avoid a falling lasagna. Floating balls of light had therefore been created to allow the people there a chance to work and get rid of the mess, but was somewhat impeded by the various other… odd effects around the room.

“...what happened?”

“Well… Zia and Milvina were developing a potion to increase stamina, you know, for when people overexert themselves in battle or in sports or something, and I think Asteria was seeing if she could adapt it for pranks? But then... it exploded into a fine mist without warning and started getting everywhere. And when it came into contact with the food, the food started jumping uncontrollably all over the place. Then everyone thought they were being attacked, so… they started attacking each other instead. And if you have a room of feuding dragons…”

This was the result. Regina mentally finished the sentence, then followed up with, “You’re surprisingly intact.”

“I set myself and everything in a one-metre radius on fire. It was quite effective, but then I forgot that there was a bottle of brandy for use in cooking over there, so…”

“And that’s why there’s glass shards and flaming brandy over on that corner?” Regina surmised, flicking her claws in that direction and putting out the alcohol fire. For a split second she had forgotten that Polaris could also control a bit of fire.

“And that’s why there’s glass shards and flaming brandy over on that corner. Also, at some point, someone cast a perpetuating charm, so… it just got ten times worse from there.”

There was a slight pause, during which a flock of penguins made of macaroni waddled past. It was almost cute, if one discounted the fact that they were alarmingly sentient. So, Regina sighed and just looked around to take in the scene.

On her right, Riyuki was using high-powered blasts of supercooled water to scrub the walls, but the oily food left stains that were definitely going to be a pain for them to clean later (though the rime it left would probably assist). On her left, Akairo was wrestling with a fairly lively wooden chair that was trying its level best to reach Annemarie. Annemarie was, in turn, attempting to use various spells to return the whole place to its original state, none of which were having much of an effect. Unsurprisingly, Ankaa was loudly complaining about the Béarnaise sauce on her wings while grabbing an ordinary broom. The occasional, livelier pieces of food were letting out half-hearted flops, while various birds and conjured animals made out of all kinds of food caused mayhem throughout the place. Various different coloured mists were also lying in wait around the room, presumably sent out by those wishing to cause even more chaos, or failed attempts at cleaning up the place.

“Afternoon,” Laurel greeted as Levina used lightning to blast the nearest attacking horde of cupcakes with various toppings. “You… might want to help Akairo out.”

“I thought you were busy?”

“It was a relatively clear-cut case, so I ended work early today,” she jerked her head in Akairo's direction with unconcealed frustration, though it obviously was directed at the state of the hall in general, not him specifically.

“Afternoon Reg!” Akairo greeted, slightly out of breath, as he tossed the chair he was trying to restrain against a nearby wall. It immediately leapt back up and went for Annemarie again. Really, it was behaving in an… oddly libidinous fashion. “How are you?” the Imperial continued rather casually as he once again lunged for the chair.

“...mostly okay,” she admitted. Annemarie dodged out of the way as the chair fought towards her while Harvest helped to clean the ceiling overhead. “You can destroy that chair; when I bought it, it cost a thousand treasure at a budget store, it’s a perfectly ordinary chair, and I have no particular attachment to it.”

Akairo grinned and put a fist through the chair, shattering it into a dozen inanimate pieces. Marie immediately sighed in relief, dramatically putting her claw to her chest. “Thank the gods, I was this close to blowing up the whole f-!”

“Language,” Victoria Amaryllis chided from the far end of the room, creating a small gust of wind that neatly blew off powdered sugar from the nearest pillar.

“We’re making decent progress, at least,” Asteria grumbled, devoid of her usual craziness, and attempted to herd the flock of Macaroni Penguins together when nobody had any immediate response.

If that was them making decent progress, Regina was deeply concerned as to what the room had been like when they got there. She glanced around and did a quick tally in her head. Ankaa, Akairo, Laurel, Vicky, a contrite Asteria, Annemarie, Polaris, Riyuki, Harvest, Bella, Zia, Milvina, and now Amalia, who had tagged along to see what was with all the weird noises coming from the dining hall. Presumably, all of them were free and the rest were busy with various things.

So, she sighed and rolled up her sleeves. Regina rubbed her claws together and produced hazmat gloves (why did she have those in the first place?) from one of her pockets. “Let’s get to work,” she grimly tugged them on and tried to ascertain which place to start.

It was… not easy, to say the least.

~0~

Getting to work was exactly what they did. In the process, they found 37 birds, 23 mice, 25 Macaroni Penguins, three biting chairs, ten Mimics, four anti-gravity mists, a cloud of sparking gas that caused anything who passed through it to turn bright blue, a baker’s dozen of enchanted plates, and, for some reason, a bar of frog spawn soap.

Polaris had grimaced once she had shoved that into a plastic hazmat bag while Levina looked on with unconcealed disgust. “Urgh. Where did that even come from?” the former grumbled, eyeing the slime coating her hazmat gloves with no small amount of bile.

Surprisingly, the trickiest things to get rid of were the Macaroni Penguins. Since they had obviously been conjured by the same person, they seemed to have an almost instant psychic connection or hivemind, often coordinating their attacks so they continued to elude capture.

And then, with a burst of violet red fire that was getting awfully alarmingly familiar at this point, the robot fire-breathing raptor burst into the dining hall and proceeded to engage in an epic battle with the Macaroni Penguin horde.

“...isn’t that the robot that went missing a few months ago?” Amalia finally commented (Regina groaned in annoyed resignation and Marie swore) as Maria, Dawn Jr, and Magnolia burst in, hot on its heels. Dawn Jr nearly slipped on the lasagna on the floor but recovered with a hop and step, Magnolia flared her wings to stop herself, while Maria just skidded to a halt before she could land face first in the nearest pond of lobster bisque complete with tiny animated versions of the eponymous crustacean made of the substance snapping their pincers at her.

“What the hell happened?”

Vicky filled them in as Regina glanced up at the ceiling. The food stains were going to be painful to get down since only Harvest was doing it right now. She was going to need excellent aim, or indiscriminate firepower- her attention was momentarily diverted to a chocolate lovebird that had landed on her head (really, she would feel bad if she had to ‘kill’ it).

As it tweeted away, everyone flinched backward when one of the penguins went flying into the lobster bisque. The bisque splattered onto Maria’s apparel, but it was okay since Anne just vanished it. The bird, on the other hand, just slid like a natural and went to rejoin its fellow macaroni avians with one of the larger lobster bisque lobsters clinging on for dear life to its tail.

“Ideas?” Polaris' claw twitched and momentarily encased the raptor in ice, but then its gelid prison glowed an ominous purple and it broke free while bathing its vicinity in flames. Even with the knowledge that Dawn Jr had just put rubidium chloride over the flamethrower somehow to achieve the specific flame colour, it still managed to give the area an eerie effect, especially given all the reflective surfaces (the liquids, broken glass, etcetera) everywhere.

“Right… Our first order of business. Everyone! Catch that damn raptor!” Regina ordered, jabbing a claw already wreathed in sunfire at it, and everyone sprung into action all too gleefully.

Their violent tendencies were somewhat disconcerting.

~0~

“I got it!” Regina winced, but she held on tight and attempted to grab the nearest table before the raptor bucked her off. Bellatrix quickly intervened by creating a large net and throwing it over the raptor, but this meant that Regina was trapped in too. Teleportation wasn’t an option, because these nets nullified all magic, so… she was stuck in with a berserk robot raptor. No, wait…

The raptor was still struggling forward, so she quickly let go and got the hell out of there. With a nod, Victoria sealed the net with wind magic. Unfortunately, it had nicked Regina’s face, so there was now a small line of red where blood was slowly tracing its way down her cheek.

Maria just threw her claws up in the air. “FINE!” she announced in exasperation as the raptor struggled to get out of the net. “I give up! I don't care anymore!”

Regina blinked, but by then Maria was on a roll. Clearly, she had snapped.

“That’s it! Enough! I hereby adopt the raptor! It’s now mine! I claim it forevermore and give it permission to wander the dormitories freely until the end of its days!” she announced loudly, if somewhat dementedly, just as Ava entered the hall.

The latter was about to say something, but then evaluated Maria’s sharp tone and the obvious stress she was experiencing. Actually, it was probably that even she couldn’t bring herself to intimidate a room full of dragons with sopping wet apparel, small splinters all over their bodies from flying cutlery and chairs, bleeding gashes, and the robot raptor spitting violet red fire.

So, instead of a quick barb, she just gave a quick, neutral nod, and produced a sturdy cage large enough to fit the raptor out of thin air. Quite the anti-climax, really.

Regina all but shoved it inside with the net, then gave her exposed and bleeding forearms a once-over. There was red liquid glistening everywhere rather nauseatingly. Yikes. Now, how to clean the ceiling…

“Umm… Regina?” Maria finally commented, looking rather put out by all the ichor for an assassin. “It’s… past 6.20.”

Regina’s head snapped around. Screw the ceiling. “What.”

“I said, it’s after 6.20,” she repeated. Regina looked awfully like she was a step away from cursing up and down.

“Right…” she all but tore off her dirtied latex gloves and dumped them into one of Polaris' hazmat bags. “You all can take care of this, right? Well, Ava’s going to put the raptor away somewhere, and then she’s taking over my job. You’ll be fine, most of you are Eternal Stars and the rest are scarily effective at achieving objectives when you actually want to.”

“Wait, so you’re saying we Stars aren’t effective-”

“Emphasis on ‘actually want to’, you Stars achieve your objectives regardless of how much thought or care is put into it anyway.”

With that, she sped for the door. Or rather, sped as much as was possible given the state of the room. She weaved her way through broken furniture and cutlery, while trying to avoid the Macaroni Penguins, the occasional ocean of various soups (was that cream of pumpkin over there complete with consommé ducks bobbing across its surface?) and the aggressively amorous chocolate lovebird attempting to land on her head.

Everyone else looked on, slightly bewildered, but then Victoria snarked something she couldn’t make out from this distance and the entire hall burst out into laughter.

“...what,” Regina grumbled, already blindly reaching for her alarm clock and slamming her claws down in its general direction to press the snooze button.

"Well," Zia cheerfully answered as the scent of what she now knew to be her conditioner assaulted her nose, "you could wake up right now."

Far from doing as suggested, Regina rolled over and turned her back to her descendant to settle deeper in her comfortable pillow fort- uh, bed. She had been up till 3am the previous night, because Akairo had accidentally eaten a ghost pepper, and since he was particularly sensitive to spicy food, both she and Spindrift had to take care of him (Dawn Jr had been asked to go help Polaris and Ava with something; she shuddered at the thought). And then, Dawn Sr had another Power Incontinence episode while in the hospital wing, and oh boy was that a nightmare to deal with. Then Skydancer the local phoenix that Phoenix the Skydancer kept around had just burned up again, so she also had to deal with a baby phoenix and the trouble that came with such a thing. Oh, and clearly the gashes by the raptor had been deeper than expected, because it was still slightly painful.

So no, she was not ready to wake up yet, and she didn’t care what Zia had to say about it.

"Rise and shine," Dawn Jr sang brightly, but this one clearly held a clear note of irritation. In response, Regina glared at the back of her eyelids to appropriately express her sentiments on the matter.

"Well, fine, if you want to be late to the emergency meeting…"

Regina was on her feet in three seconds, she went to wash up in twenty, and had picked out appropriate apparel to wear in ten. She was not above admitting that she would be willing to endure Sagittarius' flirting simply to deny her rivals the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her. Really, in her mind, it was more than an acceptable price to pay.

So Regina quickly grabbed her work perfume after glancing at the clock ("6.40, get a move on," Dawn Jr chimed, to which she had made a rude gesture at her and Zia had tsked in mock shock), and tried to console herself with the fact that it was all done in the name of annoying a certain few rivals. That, and the fact that Polaris would be there and backing her up. Yanking on a pair of gloves, Regina grimaced.

She had a long hard day ahead. Not just because of the emergency Council meeting at 7.30 in the morning, but also because the Observatory residents were insane (and who knows what they would get up to without her present), and she knew that by the time she came back she would have yet another splitting migraine.

Shuddering freely at the thought, Regina casually used magic to tidy up the room before looking at the clock again.

6.53am. More than enough time, which meant she could do her bed and check up on Spindrift and Akairo again before heading off.

~0~

Regina walked briskly into the conference room, where several dragons had already arrived and were seated around the rectangular oak table. Seven whole minutes to spare. Good. Polaris was here. Better. Her lip twitched upwards the instant she spotted her, and nodded to the cushioned office chair beside herself, where a cup of her favourite tea (chamomile, relatively strong, no milk or sugar) was waiting for her in her favourite mug (bless her). No coffee today, because they were running out of coffee in the Clan as a whole, and so she had to settle for a substitute. Gods above knew her nerves needed it.

And so, Eileen (sitting in the middle) eyed her eyebags and asked dryly, “Had some trouble getting started this morning, Reg?”

She bristled at the Reg and glared wordlessly at her in response, instead electing to raise her cup to her lips. Urgh. She had more pressing matters to attend to, like figuring out why the hell this meeting had been called in the first place. She could’ve been sleeping in today for once, but no, someone had felt like torturing all of them.

As soon as the sweet warm nectar hit her tongue, she felt about a million times better, and against her will a contented sigh escaped her lips as she slumped against her usual seat and downed the rest of it.

“So does anyone know what this emergency meeting is for?” she asked rather cynically. “Or does someone just enjoy making us jump through early morning hoops on demand? Fess up.”

“Trust me, I would never be up so early in the morning,” Dawn Jr grumbled in response. She was a night owl, after all. “I don’t know what this is about either, nobody has deigned to admit it yet, and if I had my way I would be waking up at 12pm.”

This was one of the rare few moments where Eileen looked completely taken off-guard. “...neither do I,” she admitted, looking rather pained at the thought.

“So if nobody knows what it’s about…” Zia trailed off. “Can we leave? I've been brewing a potion overnight and I have a five second window to add in the Blue Entoloma spores in half an hour exactly. I mean, I asked Milvina to do so in case I can't, but still..."

“Probably not, because a bunch of us aren’t here yet,” Amalia responded with a sigh. “It’s probably one of them. Well, not Mother, because she said she didn’t know why it was being called either, and she’s being held up by something.”

“Does anyone have anything they would like to bring up, then?” Laurel asked, sitting smack in the middle of the seats on the left.

7.28 am. Breeze entered with a spring in her step, saw her sleep-deprived colleagues, adjusted her walking pace accordingly, and took the seat between Garona and Fleetingshadow without much complaint. Then she paused.

“Why is there an extra seat?”

“Well, it’s not for me,” Hikari observed, already taking out her notebook to put on the table. She was just here to take the minutes, but somehow looked much more awake than all of the Blazelights combined.

Regina counted the seats for the second time this morning. Fleetingshadow (the only one who could stand to drink pure black coffee and was doing it right now - freak), Breeze, the other Flight Reps, empty seats (for Ava, Golden, Ayseor and Tagetes, in that order), the Stars, Elio's empty seat at the head of the table, herself, the royal family, Toji... huh. That was odd.

“It’s not for Dawn Sr, is it?”

“No, it’s not. She's still confined in the hospital wing.”

7.29am. Ava and Sanguis arrived simultaneously. The latter looked… odd… in her semi-formal wear (or maybe she had seen her in armour far too much), and the former, naturally, was wearing her usual. A side effect of the latter's presence meant that emotions would unconsciously flare, which was also why the rest had agreed to Laurel being there in the first place (Laurel negated her aggravating aura).

Behind Laurel, Levina was scowling (she needed to be present to absorb any stray sparks from all the Lightning dragons), but her being there wasn’t an issue.

“Why are we even here,” Sanguis grumbled. She wasn't the only one feeling this way.

“I have no clue,” Regina confessed, magically refilling her cup once again.

“Neither do I,” Fleetingshadow set down her mug of coffee.

“Or I,” Zia finished. “Was it any of you?”

“No,” Primal answered. Was that a margarita? Alcoholic drinks aside, how did she sneak one on the rocks into the room… no wait, magic. “It’s not the rest of the Reps either.”

“I don’t have power to call meetings,” Hikari rapidly jotted down the minutes and sipped from her cup of Earl Grey.

“Neither do I,” Laurel shrugged. "I find calling so many people for no apparently reason on short notice rather unconscionable. You have my word that it wasn't me."

“Was this a prank?” Dawn Jr scowled uncharacteristically as Elio entered the room and sat himself down in his semi-formal robes. “Elio, was it you?”

“Yes, but that’s because I received an emergency letter yesterday at 11.59pm from someone who claims to be… well, read it yourself. I don’t believe that it’s a scam." Elio slid the incriminating letter across the table until it stopped smack in the middle, and Breeze picked it up.

And so, the last seat was filled by Annemarie, arriving just 5 seconds before the clock changed to show 7.31am.

"We technically arrived on time," was Anne's explanation.

Breeze froze. "If I'm reading this correctly... it's from Dusk."

The room exploded into a cacophony of noise, where Elio was attempting to shout over the din. "EVERYONE CALM DOWN!"

This had the effect of forcing everyone to reluctantly sit down back in their seats. Regina had forgotten how loud he could be when he wanted to.

"Thank you," he sighed, "This is the other reason why I didn't invite Mother, because by now the whole room would be on fire. I had Lynx scan the whole thing for any traces of the Shade or curse magic, and fortunately there's none. He opened it earlier, so now all that's left is to read it and see its contents."

The Gaoler in question hmphed silently from the corner.

The Zephyr Dancer cleared her throat. "To my accursed sister and her family-"

"Wow, thanks so much," Dawn Jr snarked. It seemed that she couldn't resist getting at least a few quick barbs in. Breeze continued reading in a rather monotone manner until the end of it, and the only reason why people weren't talking was because Ava was glaring at all of them.

“Personally, I was more irritated by the lack of decorum,” Laurel deadpanned after she read through the letter herself. “Dusk could have at least tried to sound diplomatic but no.”

Regina rolled her eyes. “So basically, I was forced to get up at 6.30 after the grand sum of three and a half hours’ sleep, just because Dusk can’t do her job properly?”

“Not at all,” Dawn Jr snarked. “You were forced to get up at 6.30 because Dusk can’t do her job properly, and also assumes we can’t do ours.”

"I wonder why," Victoria Amaryllis shot back before she could register what she had just said.

“Why thank you for putting such a positive spin on things,” Sanguis snapped sardonically (Victoria Summershall audibly stifled a laugh), then turned with genuine surprise to Regina (who, to her credit, hadn’t retaliated against the bard's subtle jab). “Why were you up till 3am?”

“Taking care of several patients in the hospital wing, taking care of a certain someone with Power Incontinence, and Skydancer just burned up again.”

So saying, Phoenix took out a sleeping Skydancer - currently an ashen grey chick - and placed him on her lap.

“Spindrift and I were in the hospital wing for seven hours straight trying to heal all the burn wounds.”

“Aren’t Blazelights resistant or outright immune to fire?” Anne questioned.

Spindrift wearily answered, “Yes, so to cause extensive burns on fire-resistant dragons, you can imagine the extent and power of all the fire being thrown around.”

“Yikes,” Delonix winced empathetically. If anyone knew anything about fire going out of control, it was most likely her. "Now, can we get back to the matter at hand?"

"Thank you," Elio sighed. "The second reason I called this is because the second Warriors' Way is around the corner, and we're again playing host to the competition. Essentially, this is going to be the organising committee, but... my main concern is that if Dusk attacks during Warriors' Way - and she most likely is given how obviously she's threatening us - we need to be appropriately prepared. The last time she attacked, she sent an entire horde of dragons made out of the Shade, so... this round might be worse, actually. She is many things, but she is not stupid, and despite her own Shade corruption has always shown a tendency to learn from her mistakes. I'm just grateful that her conniving tendencies got degenerated."

The older dragons who had been around during those early days winced.

"So, I would like ideas for security, but give them to Merak and Laurel. You two were in charge last year, you might as well do it again. Now, back to anti-Dusk measures..."

"There seems to be a rather large increase in dragons injured during sparring recently," Spindrift grumbled to Regina as he passed her a bottle of dreamless sleep potion. Deities above knew she needed it, what with all the... everything... going on both in the Observatory and in the Clan proper.

"And you need me to check," Regina summarised.

The Fae didn't even pause as he poured out the dose he needed to administer to a feverish Koel (it was pollen season). "Preferably you and not Laurel or Ava, for... obvious reasons, yes."

~0~

"What the hell happened here?"

"Sweet," was all Anne answered as Marie downed yet another Major Health Potion.

"As in the potion is sweet, or...?"

"No, it's rather bitter and sharp. I was referring to the Wildclaw."

Oh. Regina peered over at the training grounds, where a pinkish blur was simultaneously fighting Soko, Zia, Breeze, Ravenna, and Laurel. She hadn't known that the obsidian Skydancer could use melee weapons, but right now she was wielding a partisan made of highly condensed cyan lightning. It was quickly apparent that she was rusty. The rest were a different story. Ravenna was engaging Sweet in melee with Laurel occasionally swooping in to trap her in a pincer formation, while Breeze fired arrows and the two mages moved around the back line to take potshots at her. Normally, such a strategy would have worked, were it not for the fact that Sweet was unusually fast and had eyes on her wings, which allowed her to dart out of the attacks in time.

"That's actually quite impressive," Regina admitted, glancing at Ava and Polaris nursing their own wounds. The Archmage looked unusually humbled by the experience; she had probably gotten a proper thrashing and it most likely had been a while (though this was for good reason). Ava, on the other hand, just looked... contemplative leaning on all-out strategising. No doubt she was preparing for Round Two, then.

"Mhm. Sweet already forced Zia to accidentally hit Soko earlier, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're coming up with new strategies to beat her," Polaris decided, as the mage in question vanished in a blizzard of petals and orbs of light before reappearing behind the Wildclaw and shooting more balls of light at her.

"How did you lose then?"

"Why is your first assumption that I lost?"

Regina glanced at Polaris' deliberately over-the-top expression of mock hurt. "Because if you had actually put in effort to win, there would still be ice around the room, we would still be thawing Sweet out, and you wouldn't have to heal any injuries. I'm more interested in how Ava lost."

Ava glared.

"It was a genuine question; what did she do to counter you and how can you apply that to beat her next time?"

The glare abated. "She is much faster than my arrows."

A pause.

"Also, the cavern is an enclosed space so it would be difficult for me to employ my usual tactics. She can also see them coming due to the eyes on her wings, and her four wings allow her to twitch out of the way. However, she seems to avoid actually flying, but her long-range magic missiles more than make up for it," Ava scowled.

"Not surprised, four wings are bit... wonky," Polaris muttered under her breath, then continued in a louder voice, "The missiles are homing missiles, and Ava already tried using the daggers and flechettes to take the blow for her, so Sweet knows about those. Really, the only way I can see Ava winning is if the battle is held in an open-air area."

"So how will Breeze fare?"

"Well, Breeze isn't cripplingly overspecialised, she knows how to use a sword well, and she's fighting alongside others," Polaris counted. "I can see one way to beat her would be overwhelming her with opponents, but she can use them against each other. The other method is to force her into the air, because I can see her being rather unwieldy, and the air going past the eyes on her wings would dry them out really quickly so she might just be forced to close them- Oh, look."

Apparently they had all come to some consenus, because Soko had iced the floor and Zia had spread some oil from the small pouch she was carrying onto the floor before she set it on fire. Breeze, meanwhile, had whipped up a gale to spread the droplets of flaming oil - and now the melted water - everywhere.

"The warmer the water, the more conductive it is," Polaris observed, right before Laurel discharged what seemed to be her entire electricity storage and the gale turned into a small cyclone. Ravenna had retreated to lick her wounds, and the one downside was that Sweet didn't have eyes on her back so she didn't quite see the fire tornado coming in time.

"That worked," Anne commented as the acrid stench of burning oil reached them. Regina just quietly sent an apology to Spindrift.

"I... have an idea for the rematch," Ava finally slowly divulged, as if she was incredibly hesitant to share it.

"Why are you telling us this?"

"I... will need as many books on aerodynamics and wind magic as possible."

~0~

Sweet did not look very put out by the prospect of beating more dragons.

"C'mon, I beat Ava last time," she laughed as Regina and Zia shared a look. "I can do it again!"

"Since Ava is the one wanting a rematch, she booked the open-air arena from... well, now, until lunch. Right now, she's using it to teach Asa archery."

"Sorry, she is teaching Asa? I thought Asa was skittish around almost everyone save Hikari!" Victoria the Bard turned to look with an incredulous look on her face.

"I know, Ava is shockingly good with children. Either way, she wants to know if you accept the rematch, if not, she'll continue with Asa's training, if yes, she'll ask Magnolia."

"..."

"Magnolia is also good with kids."

"Okay, fine then, let's go."

~0~

Virtually the entire Clan had shown up to watch the rematch, which was already impressive, but judging from the looks on Breeze's, Polaris', and Annemarie's faces, they were in for a treat.

Asa was sitting on the sidelines with Magnolia, who was talking about different bow poundages when Regina went to sit behind her.

"Place your bets," Toji called out as the pot filled with glittering treasure got slammed down onto the commentator's table where Laurel and Merak were. The obsidian Skydancer looked awfully bloodthirsty as she dumped in a pouch of treasure and called out, "10kt on Ava winning."

"I thought the commentators were supposed to be fair."

"I'm betting on her as someone who nearly got whooped by her opponent, not as a commentator."

Well, Victoria couldn't argue with that logic.

In the center of the arena, Ava was examining her best bow before giving it a resolute nod and storing it with her quiver, then noticed Sweet entering.

"Are both contestants ready?" Merak asked, his naturally booming voice resounding around the entire arena. Sweet just gave a vicious grin, while Ava (obviously wanting to retain some semblance of poise) merely nodded and took a few steps backward.

"Then... begin!"

~0~

Ava's wings swept wide as the crackle of lightning signalled the start of the bout, and she hammered them down with about 10-metre wings of air and her updraft technique augmenting her own wingspan. The sheer amount of air she moved sent her climbing upwards at supersonic speed, shooting up and puncturing a hole in the clouds in moments. Once she was above the cloud layer, she continued to bank around until she was facing the Wildclaw - then accelerated.

Sweet started, as was usual for her, with a blast of Arcane energy, and Ava twitched to dodge out of the way of the attack entirely. However, that meant she shot far past the boundary of the arena, and so she did a wingover to right herself.

Her own first attack was a drilling whirl of coherent air visible from the condensation it forced out of the air - wind magic, then - and it bored straight in on Sweet until the Wildclaw's claws glowed eye-hurtingly pink and swiped at it. The focus to block meant she couldn't defend at the same time, though, and Ava swooped past while firing arrows before curving around for another pass.

Halfway through her bank, though (she had stored her bow), she flipped backward and rolled her wings at the same time. The air currents around her detached as she stalled, temporarily lost any semblance of order (which meant the Arcane homing missiles got exploded by the outermost currents), and then within a second they focused back together and blew her back along her original course at almost the full speed she'd had before.

"What in the Arcanist's name?!" Sweet demanded as the beam she had fired in anticipation of where she thought Ava would have been obviously missed entirely, then threw yet another beam at the same time as a hurricane got whipped up.

Given that she was very firmly on the ground, the powerful blast of wind only knocked her backwards slightly, but then the attack crested like a wave and the wind curled up by itself before all the pent-up energy uncoiled again and imploded, hitting the Wildclaw from both sides at once.

Sweet's own beam flashed across Ava's wings, not getting any purchase (though that was likely because Ava had temporarily condensed the water vapour into mist as a protective shield), then it fizzled out into the air as Ava executed another wingover and shot more flechettes.

So, Sweet started firing several small balls of Arcane energy that were individually not very powerful but which she could charge and aim faster. Ava thus began dodging and weaving around them, and after maybe twenty seconds of this rain of pink energy she pulled off another aerodynamically questionable manoeuvre, barely missing the final Arcane blast that came her way, before abruptly pulling up and launching twin razor winds at her.

~0~

"I... don't think those are the laws of aerodynamics Ava's obeying," Dawn Jr finally blinked a few times and commented.

"Pot, meet kettle," Regina deadpanned.

"Well, I suspect wind magic is to blame," Breeze jabbed a claw at where a small hurricane came in from the side for Sweet to barely dodge, allowing Ava to pepper her with arrows and do a zoom climb.

"When is it not to blame- whoa!"

~0~

Ava came stooping down out of the sky with her wings covered in what was distinctly Wind magic. Sweet formed a temporary shield of Arcane magic then left it behind as she took off (finally) in a burst of magically-enhanced speed, while Ava pulled up at the last moment to let the Wind magic collide with the shield in a detonation that lit up the sky with light and deafened everyone else.

Neither of the dragons at the heart of the explosion were deterred, however. Sweet formed a thick mist which billowed out along with the residual smoke, and Ava barely skimmed above the ground before banking sharply and accelerated hard. Her wings flared and yet another hurricane formed, but the spreading mist gave her cover - that is, until something went off, forcing the mist to condense out of the air and form a brief blast of Ice magic. Though... with all the mist, it was difficult to tell where the Wildclaw was, especially now that she was flying.

Ava swept around for a bit, and another Arcane blast flashed out towards her, but she accelerated to supersonic speed again and it went wide partially from the overpressure blasting it away. Clearly, Sweet had severely misjudged the speeds she could hit on demand, because the following blasts also missed entirely. The sonic boom formed a vapour cone, however, and this actually helped the mist to spread and Sweet to expand the space she was hiding in. When Ava tried flying through it, though, she quickly found the other problem: While her unpredictable course made it such that Sweet couldn't just attack her while passing through, but the pressure wake she left made all the mist start to condense, and when she emerged from the other side it was with frost sublimating off her feathers.

Ava waited until the frost was completely gone, then did a roll and flip again such that the wind she was generating coiled around her and launched her back in the direction she had been flying. Just before she reached the mist, however, she pulled up sharply and stalled, rapidly slowing and accelerating multiple times, and left complex wind patterns behind her as she slowly gained speed. Her second pass was similar, but still not the same, as rather than perform yet another Cobra she did a triple roll which drew up the mist in a corkscrew pattern, and then in her third pass she abruptly dropped to pass under the cloud, and shed all of her momentum at once to leave her at a standstill in the air.

Overhead, all the wind currents began to tighten at once, and then a tornado suddenly formed out of nowhere, creating a screaming vortex of high-powered winds that shredded the mist cloud and sucked the Wildclaw into the eye.

Ava flipped over such that her back faced the ground and simultaneously nocked three arrows imbued with Wind magic. There was a pink flash, and then a shattering explosion tore the tornado apart and left Sweet falling unconscious to the ground.

~0~

"...yikes," Regina muttered.

"Well, if anyone wants to challenge her, you're free to, but, uh... grab Sweet first?" Merak finally decided, so Spindrift and Honeyleaf went to recover her body, while Laurel distributed the betting pool money to those who had correctly bet on Ava.

"Can I?" Marie called, and didn't immediately flinch when everyone looked at her like she was crazy. For the record, that included Ava. Then again, Anne was looking at her like they had planned this. Hmm.

"Well, if you want to end up in the hospital wing, I'm not stopping you."

"Look what you've dragged us into," Anne bemoaned, then when she thought nobody was looking, flashed Polaris a conspirational wink.

Ah.

~0~

A whole five minutes later, during which Polaris had briefly briefed her on some things and they had picked out some decent armour, Annemarie was back on the field. Ava stood from where she had been resting on the bench and took to the air, but this time she was nowhere near as high up as before. Instead, she was hovering a good thirty metres above the ground, and seemed to be either contemplating or appraising her opponent depending on who was commentating.

"Begin!"

Ava promptly flared her wings and beat them, twisting the air around her into knots so that while she accelerated instantly from zero to about three quarters the speed of sound in one wingbeat she also did it backwards.

Annemarie opened aggressively with twin blasts of high-powered water strong enough to pierce steel, but Ava's unexpected maneuver meant that both missed her entirely, and the mess of confused air she had left behind twisted and turned into a razor wind that fired off from seemingly empty space to zoom towards them.

Unlike Sweet, though, Marie was obviously well aware of the necessity of shielding straight away, and so she did. The attack crashed into a thick wall of water, which got turned into several smaller orbs while Anne fired off another water jet. The jet missed as well, because Ava converted 926.1 kilometers per hour backwards to 926.1 kilometers per hour forwards with a loud bang that momentarily produced a cloud of condensation around her wingtips.

Anne promptly capitalised on that by freezing the condensation on her wingtips.

While Ava tried to react to the sudden change in airflow on her wings and get rid of the ice, Annemarie took the opportunity to take to the air herself while still surrounded by the orbs of water. It was most likely that they were propelling themselves with the water vapour in the air, since they had actually reached quite the decent speed, and they curved around to follow the Skydancer the best they could.

Ava tucked in her wings and went propelling towards the ground to solve her ice problem, and Marie carefully started shooting the water orbs at her. Marie seemed to have been imbuing them with quite a lot of water magic, because they were glowing blue slightly.

The first one hit, then Ava twitched and the second collided with her feather flechettes in an explosion of magic, then the third missed and covered the entire arena floor in a shallow layer of water, then the fourth scored another hit because she didn't quite get her flechettes out in time.

So, Ava followed through with launching the flechettes, then backflipped, still going down at the same speed as before, inhaled slightly, and fired a high-powered collimated blast of air from her mouth.

Obviously Annemarie had to dodge out of the way, not wanting to get hit by either attack, and it blazed an arc into the sky before dissipating as Ava pulled up out of her dive and vortices began spooling off her newly unfrozen wings.

Annemarie promptly vanished in a blur.

~0~

"I forgot she could do that," Polaris stated flatly.

"I didn't know she could do that," Harvest muttered faintly, and closed her eyes so she could track Annemarie by way of magical signature.

"I don't know how she does that," Zia finished. "I can't tell, at least."

"Judging by what I can see my guess is that she covered herself entirely in a thin film of water and somehow forced the light to refract through it so that they became invisible," Harvest answered. "Not the easiest bit of magic to pull off, there."

"Oh yeah, she's one of those Academia folks. What's her rank again?" Pele asked.

"Both of them are Magi, but-"

"They're taking the Magister examination in one and a half months, after Harvest takes her own in a month's time," Polaris stated. "I have a suspicion Marie accepted the challenge because she wants to give a good showing here, get some practice in, or impress me. Maybe all of them."

Harvest was thus abruptly reminded that though they in no way acted like it and Anne was to blame for the Wing Incident, Annemarie outranked her. Not that she wasn't aware of it intellectually, of course, but it was difficult to reconcile the image of a clumsy Anne or ditzy Marie with that of a Magus. "I wouldn't be surprised either."

Over on the firmly Team Ava side of the bleachers, Zephyrus turned to his fellow secretaries with an excited glint in his eye. "Did you see those post-stall maneuvers?"

"Call me crazy," Eurus started.

"We already do," Notus snapped.

Eurus gestured dismissively at him with a forearm. "I was going to say, I'm pretty sure I only neologise words, not entirely new structures of aerodynamics that seem in danger of tearing a hole in space-time."

"Can you even create them?" Aeolus asked with a pointed look at the Gaoler's stunted wings. He usually minced his words, but could clearly be brutal when he wanted to.

Eurus winced. "Touche."

There was a loud bang as Ava went supersonic again, a trail of condensation rippling behind her before it sharpened into ice knives zooming after her (courtesy of Anne). She dodged all of them with a zoom climb, and began making high-speed passes that traced a three-dimensional grid through the sky and hung there instead of dissipating, and which rippled only slightly every time she passed through it.

"Err... what's she doing, where's Annemarie, and why aren't they doing the same thing they did just now?" Piccolo asked when nobody said anything. "Ideas?"

"They're invisible," Auster snarked.

Fair.

~0~

"It's a trap," Anne muttered under her breath as she used magical sight to eye the grid rather contemplatively. "If we disturb the wind cage she'll know, so no ice daggers. She's good at this. Suggestions?"

"Disrupt it in the way we want to be disrupted. Fancy magical cage aside, it's still condensation and you can control it," Marie murmured back. She could be awfully focused when she wanted to.

So, Annemarie shot straight up and forced the condensation on the bottom of the cage upwards with a shockwave.

The wind cage twisted as the trails all got whipcracked together into an instant tornado, then into two - one clockwise, one anticlockwise - creating an intense shear zone between the two with only the eye of the tornado as safe ground.

"Look at this, it's textbook," Anne bemoaned, just before an arrow saturated with so much wind magic it nearly blinded her magical sight came diving down through the eye at supersonic speed. Ava followed behind with her wings half-folded, catching the wind and spilling through a drilling aileron roll, and then both went straight through the shockwave of water vapour Anne had created without even slowing down.

Marie summoned all the water vapour in the air and strengthened her shield as far as it would go while Anne shot another few barrages of water orbs and flew at their maximum speed to meet the attack. The first set stopped the arrow and exploded that, and then Annemarie collided with Ava's melee wind magic attack at a total closing speed significantly higher than the speed of sound. The orbs detonated with enough force to flood the entire arena and did their best to shield them from most of the force of the blow, then Marie threw the full force of the shield at where she presumed Ava was, and for several long seconds afterward nobody was sure what had just happened.

~0~

"What the-"

From the outside, after the double tornado had twisted itself out of thin air, it promptly exploded in a concussive blast that rattled all the windows and everything not fixed down nearby. Streamers of wind and mist spread out like the trails of a firework, rising up to form a mushroom cloud, then began to drift in the wind and slowly fade away.

"...colour me impressed," Polaris finally allowed. "Someone should probably go catch them before they hit the ground."

Honeyleaf caught Ava just before she impacted the ground, mostly because the Imperial was large enough to do so. "She's unconscious," she called, and promptly carried her away, presumably to the hospital wing.

Annemarie dove into the deep water on the ground and swam back to the raised platform where the bleachers were. "Whew," Anne grumbled, thoroughly soaked to the bone, as Marie clambered upwards onto the platform before Laurel tossed her a towel for them to dry themselves off. She was immediately accosted by Spindrift, who started performing medical checkups on her because Ava was not known for going soft on others in combat.

Regina just let out a long sigh. "That was... rather educational."

If you feel that this content violates our Rules & Policies, or Terms of Use, you can send a report to our Flight Rising support team using this window.

Please keep in mind that for player privacy reasons, we will not personally respond to you for this report, but it will be sent to us for review.

0/1000

Click or tap a food type to individually feed this dragon only. The other dragons in your lair will not have their energy replenished.

Exalting Hunapo to the service of the Lightweaver will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.

Do you wish to continue?

Name

Names must be longer than 2 characters.
Names must be no longer than 16 characters.
Names can only contain letters.

Name

Names must be no longer than 16 characters.
Names can only contain letters.