"Hey, Jake, how long so you take there? The customer's waiting!", Dale shouted into the workshop. Jake could hear that the old man was losing his patience.

"Almost ready, give me five for clean-up and some polish for the extra shine! But it's already all tested and ready to go!", he answer while wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Jake Long, the American Dragon, also known as the AmDrag, was sometimes annoyed by the pressure the owner of the shop, Dale Udem, put him through, but in the end he was always happy with his current occupation. He couldn't wish for something else that would still be better than his gramps' dusty store. Not that he wouldn't still show up there regularly, but it wasn't how he wanted to spend his days and when one day the opportunity came up, he was all too happy to get out of there. Just a few months ago he graduated from highschool and went straight to college, together with Rose, obviously. Ever since he had met her back in Hongkong, things had pretty much been all flowers and candy. He got better at school with new motivation, learned a lot of magic tricks from his grandfather as he did finally prove himself mature enough and he really got rose back. She had promised him that as soon as she'd finish highschool, she'd move back to New York no matter what. They tried to see each other as often as possible in the meantime which almost absolutely narrowed down to their dream dates, but he was already used to that from back when she was still part of the Huntsclan. And yet with their coming of age a lot of things were set in motion. She moved back to NY in a small apartment while attending college, paying her tution by giving martial arts and self defense lessons in the evening. It wasn't easy to come by along with the lessons and still getting to see each other, but they managed and couldn't be happier considering they had been quite violently forced apart twice before.

While Rose was giving lessons in a dojo, Jake had found himself a job with a half-dwarf he had met on a mission. Dale Udem was a nice guy overall, but his heritage was quite visible; more than a foot shorter than most people and arms like he was lifting tanks, bald but with a hude beard. He was still in contact with the magical community, but just so he didn't miss anything important. He preferred working with machines, so he soon opened his own repair store for anything with an engine and just large enough to fit into the workshop. When he had trouble with a leprechaun who was terribly insitent to sell him a collection of tools and the American Dragon came by to take care of the golddigger, he found a notice that Dale was hiring a part-timer to help him out with the repairs. Making the deal then and there, Dale accepted the condition that Jake would sometimes have to run off for his dragon duties. The world wouldn't keep the feet down just because its guardian needed some cash after all.

Just as Jake got up, finally finished with cleaning the bike, his mobile rang. "Aw man, what is it now?", he sighed and flipped it open. Gramps again. Goblins causing a ruckus in downtown. "Yeah, like, this is just what I needed today." He put his phone away again and finally presented the bike to the customer. Jake just gave a short summary on the repairs done as he soon had to excuse himself: "Boss, gotta move out, customer in downtown suddenly got stuck, probably engine, I'll see what I can do, bye!"

"But make it quick so you'll be back in time for closing!", Dale shouted after him as the AmDrag was already rushing out of the door.

Meanwhile, in anther magical community...

Today was the day. The day she would finally not fail. The second day of her second year. The day they finally got to summon their familiars. And nobody had ever failed to summon a familiar. Even though she, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, "the Zero",would get more than an explosion out of it, that she knew as a fact... the thought. Hoped. Prayed. She might as well just drop out if she couldn't even summon a familiar. The lifelong bond between Mage and Familiar had been a sacred tradition ever since the days of Bremir. If she failed to summon a familiar today, she'd go home. But surely, she couldn't be that bad, could she?

She spent the morning with a short breakfast and going through the books for what felt like a thousand times. She honestly didn't know what was even wrong. Concentration, willpower, wand, she had everything done the way the books described it. Sometimes it felt like a curse, being able to cause nothing but explosions. Louise hated being called the Zero, yet she understood why; ever since the first most basic spells, she caused nothing but explosions with varying degrees of destruction as a result. Just yesterday she had blown up the classroom again when the new teacher called her to the front for a simple transmutation spell.

Today... today I'll show them all that I'm not a Zero!

Despite having been so sure of everything before, the doubts caught up with Louise as one student after the other summoned their familiar under the supervision of Mr. Colbert. The majority of the students summoned regular animals, the rest was blessed with magical beasts, of which only a few were really impressive, mostly Kirche's Salamander and Tabitha's dragon. Both of them were impressive mages, so the familiars fit them quite well. It got her worried about what her familiar would be like. Would it be something powerful? Destructive? Perhaps even evil? It was sure to be something unique, but what could be more unique than a dragon as familiar in the second year...

"Now, was that everyone?", Mr. Colbert asked loudly.

"No, we still have Miss Valliere to go", Kirche said and everyone at least chuckled on that.

With a grim face, said noble stepped forward despite the murmur around her.

"Louise the Zero!"

"What will she summon?"

"There's no way she can summon anything! We'll just have another explosion, nothing else."

"After all that boasting, you'll summon something more amazing than this little guy here, right, Louise?", Kirche said with a condescending voice while petting her salamander.

Louise huffed: "Of course!" Please...

Nobody was surprised when the incantation resulted in another explosion, but all fell silent when the dust cloud settled and they saw just what Louise had summoned...

After rushing out of the shop, Jake quickly ran into an empty side street to get to his real work. For the last few years, he got more and more lessons on spellcasting, mostly easy utility spells that saved him a lot of time. One of these was a spell that got rid of all the dirt; there were a few situations when he suddenly appeared covered in dirt. Another was a transparency spell, it didn't make him completely invisible but he was little more than a passing shadow for most and by the time they looked twice, he was already gone. After applying both and turning into his dragon form, Jake took off towards downtown.

The job seemed easy enough at first, but when he saw two groups of goblins fighting each other in a park, probably over territory again, and tried to interfere, they suddenly stopped fighting and ran away in different directions. Creating a Doppelganger on a split second decision, each one hurried after the goblins who proved to be quite elusive. After another corner, he lost their trace. Damn it all, where did they go? He rose above the buildings to get a better overview. With his Eyes of the Dragon's power it didn't take him lok to find them again. At some point they had turned around and tried to sneak away right beneath him, only by sheer luck he had noticed them. "GOTCHA!", he yelled and made a dive toward them. Finally he got them...

...If only it hadn't been for the strange green orb of light that suddenly appeared right in front of him. Too late to even try to evade, he flew straight through it and went tumbling through... space? In the shock he reverted to his human form when he noticed that he was in fact rushing towards another shining light and heard a female voice. Sadly, said light proved to be quite solid when he crashed into it back forwards and it blew the air out of his lungs. He rolled over while groaning and coughing from pain and dust. When his vision cleared up, Jake found himself surrounded by many young wizards if their clothes weren't just cosplay. One of them, a short pink-haired girl, was involved in a heated discussion with an adult, probably a teacher of some sorts? Too bad he couldn't understand what they said, he already had to learn most european languages when he had an assignment or meeting abroad but none of it helped him here. It did sound a bit like French but definitely wasn't it. When the girl suddenly stomped towards him with an annoyed look on her face, his first reaction was a roll backwards. He just barely made it, though, and suddenly felt terribly dizzy as his vision began to blur and darken again. The next thing he noticed was her hand on his cheek and suddenly, to his shock, she kissed him. "HEY! I have a girlfriend already, what the hell do you think you're doing!?", he yelled. He knew he wasn't at fault for whatever was happening right now but it still disturbed him a lot. Even mor disturbing wa the fact that his whole body felt like it was cooking. "What... what is happening?", he asked angrily but still couldn't understand her reply. "...what?" After surges of pain like having hot iron pressed on his left hand, his consciousness was embraced by a cold darkness.

Wow. Now that was a nasty dream. How hard did I hit the wall to deserve something like that?, Jake thought as he slowly woke up and sat up on whatever scratchy stuff he was lying. Feeling around he suspected his bed to be a pile of junk but instead it was... hay? Oh no. Looking around and finding himself in a terribly old-fashioned room (Gramps would SO love to see this), his eyes met those of his wannabe-affair. Oh, freaking hell, please no. She was still speaking this strange language like she hadn't noticed that he didn't understand a word of it. Wait. Waitwaitwait. Why didn't I think of that earlier? He turned his head away from her a bit so that she wouldn't see what he was doing and activated his Ear of the Dragon which he enhanced further with a spell he had been taught for his first missions in Canada, just behind the border. "But I've given up. I'm going to have you as my familiar. Be honored", the girl said while going away and he was happy to have managed the translator spell. FAMILIAR? You've gotta be kidding me! "No! Absolutely not! Forget it! I need to go back as soon as possible, no, right now! Gods, my boss will be angry..." Jake shouted as he jumped up and looked after her as she went to a wardrobe and started undressing. What the...? He was still looking at her in stupor when her blouse and skirt landed on his face. "Wash those! Even if you don't understand our language, a familiar can understand that much." Oh, but he understood her. With his face contorted with spite, he threw the clothes on the nearby bed and stomped towards the door. He didn't pay her any more attention, but stated turning towards her when she yelled "Ansur Ver Ang", but it was already too late as an explosion crushed into his side. He quickly regained his senses, but there was still this strange ringing noise in his ear. Well, that was the last bit of patience, he thought as he got up and walked towards her: "I held back until now because I have more urgent stuff to do, but if I have to use force..."

"I understand! I understood that!", the girl said, just as his hand landed on her shoulders.

"Did you just say 'I understand'?"

She nodded and he hesitated. In spite of her assault, perhaps he wouldn't have to use force after all. "Say something", she requested.

"What, so you suddenly learned to speak English?"

"What does this mean? I cast a spell of silence on you!", she said and let her head hang down with a sigh, "another failure... You, what's your name?"

He crossed his arms in front of his chest. "For all I know it's common courtesy for the host to introduce himself first but since noe of you seem to have any manners, whatever. I'm Jake Long."

"Jakelong?" she asked while her face clearly showed irritation.

"More important, why am I here?"

"I have summoned you, of course. As a familiar, right?"

"Oh, yeah, that familiar thing. Sorry to say, but no deal. Nope. Can't do."

She just looked at him, completely flabbergasted. One might think she just saw the most impossible thing in the world, whatever it was... after all Jake Long had seen all kinds of impossibles already, including dating the Huntsgirl. "What did you just say?"

"If you need official help with something, you should just have asked your local guardian, no point in summoning me somewhere. And about that familiar, I have to maintain neutrality, so something like that is an absolute no-go. That one time with the leprechauns was enough of a lesson for me. Where are we even? Scotland? Germany?"

She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Sit down. I can't make much sense of the rest you where saying, so let's first talk about the 'where' and 'why'."

Jake had sat down on the a chair although she had insited for him to sit on the pile of hay, his chin resting on the palm of his hand by now. "So it's like that," he tried to recall all the information of the last few minutes, "this is the kingdom of Tristain, on the continent of Harkegenia", she nodded and he continued, "and you are a student at the Institute of Magic here."

"I won't allow a familiar to call me 'you'", the pinkette mentioned arrogantly, "my name is Louise. Louise de la Valliere."

"Yeah, right, whatever, and I'm supposed to be that familiar the mages always tote around, but I already-" He stopped talking when her sigh made it obvious that she wasn't even listening to him.

"Why is my familiar a peasant boy? I wanted something cool like a dragon or a griffon!", Louise complained, just to notice that her familiar had used her distraction to escape. "Jake? A familiar running away? You're kidding!", he heard her yell with his enhanced senses. Yeah, the hell will freeze before a country's guardian dragon becomes someone's personal familiar. Being a boyfriend is binding enough as it already is!, he thought while running down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped before running around the corner. In the corridor another blonde student was flirting with a brunette in the most cliche way.

"I'm good at baking souffles", the girl said while being quite close to him.

"I'd love to try one."

"Really?!"

"Of course, Ketty. I wouldn't lie to your eyes." Jake nearly had to throw up from all the sparkles surrounding that guy.

"Lord Guiche!" How can she even fall for that?

"There's nothing hidden behind my feelings for you."

Jake decided that now was his chance as good as ever and tried to casually walk past them, which not much to his surprise failed completely. "Isn't that the peasan that Lousie summoned?" Guiche noticed, but jake just kept walking.

"In today's ritual?It caused quite a stir among the first year students as well."

"He fainted suddenly and stopped moving, so it was quite troublesome for us. Hold on you!" the student called and Jake stopped to turn around to him.

"Yes?"

"A peasant putting a noble to trouble and not even a word of thanks?"

"Funny how nobody knows who they're talking to. Oh well, thanks for the help though" he said as he already kept going. "See ya, or not." Irritating jerk.

He suddenly heard fast steps coming down the stairs, so he increased his own pace too. As he heard them talking above while still in the hallway, he slowed down to hear Guiche mock Louise that nothing else was expected from her.

From the end of the next flight of stairs, he finally saw the exit, just past a fountain where a busty redhead was clinging to another boy. He ignored them and started sprinting as he heard his wannabe-master yell behind him: "Oh, he's over there!"

"Right", Guiche commented.

"Hey, what are you guys doing?", the redhead asked.

"Oh just listen to this!" Guiche started but was interrupted by Louise again.

"Knock it of! He's getting away!"

Damn, they were already way to close. Jake just jumped down the last flight of stairs past the door and landed on grass. Good. being outside makes it a lot easier already. Now, where do I need to go?, he thought but was interrupted when he lost his footing. Out of reflex, he cast an antimagical shield around himself which left him stumbling around when he suddenly landed and almost fell. He turned around to his pursuers and yelled: "Hey! I don't know what exactly what you were planning to do, but it was definitely the LAST thing you'll do!", and got in his combat-ready pose. They may have been mean guys, but the Huntsclan had been good at martial arts if nothing else and Rose had taught him pretty much everything in case he couldn't rely on magic. and when around these madmen, he didn't want to let out all of his skills at once since he still didin't know their capabiilties.

Guiche and Louise were just standing there, completely stunned, Guiche's Rose still lift and pointed somewhere upwards. They were approached by the redhead who was still laughing. "A familiar that runs from his master? It's too funny! What's this? Hey, Hey? What are you guys waiting for?"

Guiche grit his teeth and swung his rose again. This time more visible, a small green sparkling cloud appeared where the levitation spell hit the invisible shield. He looked around hurriedly. "Hey, whoever you are, I'd advise you to come out right now! Interfering with another person's familiar is not a joking matter!"

Great. Now he's totally going nuts. Jake relaxed and turnedaround to go away. If this was the extent of their efforts, he'd have nothing to fear from them. His look turned towards the night sky...

and noticed a small red and a large clear blue moon. "Fuck. You're kidding, right?"