The Dragon's Path
Prologue: Enter the dragon?
AN: this starts in Final Fantasy VII world, but it is only at the start of this chapter, and the world will not appear again, although some aspects might.
A single pebble may cause ripples, that can become waves, and alter the path of destiny for a body of water. A magic stone can have the same effect, but on a much greater scale. A single stone may alter the path of a mighty river, but a stone made of crystallized life force may alter the path of destiny itself.
It was a stormy night, the type of night that nobody wants to be out in unless they had to. Lightning was flashing through the sky with disturbing regularity, and in this storm three figures were standing against a large white monster. The monster was a weapon made by the very planet for its defense.
The three figures were a buxom brunette who was named Tifa, a foul mouth large black man with a gun instead of a hand who was named Barret, and lastly the leader Cloud, who was a blond swordsman wielding a huge sword. The three had been fighting the weapon for quite some time.
Cloud in a command decision tried to end the fight quickly, raised his armlet, and activated a red materia, and after feeling a good chunk of his mystical energy get consumed, a steel gray dragon appeared from a hole in reality.
The dragon dived down through the clouds, and started to hover in front of the white weapon and started to charge up its attack as the materia commanded it to when, out of nowhere a lance of blue energy came from a huge cannon mounted in a extremely large city nearby. The lance of energy nicked the dragon, and continued on to spear the monster before heading on to hit, and dispel, a forcefield nearly a half a world away. The shockwave from the dragons roar of pain, combined with the surprise of the shot caused the blond swordsman to fall, and in a spectacular moment of bad luck, hit his bracelet on a nearby stone, which caused the stone which was used to summon the dragon god, Bahamut, and the summon, deprived of the force that brought it there, was sent back to where it belonged, most of him at least. A small amount of his blood from his opened wound fell through the cracks in the dimensions.
In another place, in an underground laboratory, A missing nin with snakelike features had just finished strapping a nine year old girl to an experiment table, the girl was fit, nude, had cream colored skin, and crimson hair, and was about to inject her with a special formula, when a small black crack appeared in midair right in front of him, causing him to drop the glass syringe which shattered on the ground.
From the crack came a small amount of blood which hit her chest and pooled there. Orochimaru quickly collected what he could, as its mysterious appearance intrigued him.
The next two weeks were filled with research on the blood. He quickly determined that it had come from something exceedingly powerful, perhaps more powerful than the nine tailed fox that had attacked the leaf village. After countless hours of experimentation he finally created two syringes which theoretically had the potential to grant those it was injected into great power, and long life.
Kabuto's two weeks on the other hand was spent taking care of the research subject, as he was on vacation from his Konohagakure ninja duties. He spent his time feeding his master, the experimental subject, and himself, cleaning the subject, watering her, and keeping her sedated so he wouldn't have to listen to her screaming and crying.
One day before he had to leave and return to the village, Orochimaru came in to the room which contained both the girl and his right hand man, with his two syringes on a cart. Normally he would've just carried them, but in this case, as he didn't have anymore of the blood he used for the synthesis of the serum, he was taking few chances. The girl was awake at this point as Orochimaru didn't want his experiment ruined by extra drugs in the victims bloodstream. With a sadistic smile the snake sanin grabbed her head and injected one of the syringes into a vein in her neck. Suddenly a small shockwave from the girl in front of him sent both of the males in the stumbling back. Unfortunately for Orochimaru he had stumbled back into the cart that was behind him, and knocked it, as well as the other glass syringe to the ground, shattering it.
The girl screamed in agony and strained against her restraints for nearly five minutes when suddenly, she slumped down with her eyes half opened and glassy.
Kabuto shook his head after he had hit the wall moved to her side and took her pulse. He looked at his master as he got up, and shook his head.
Orochimaru frowned and said, "Unstrap her, then go back to your regular duties, I'll send someone to dispose of the body later." He then walked out of the room.
"Yes sir," the other man said mas he did what he was told. He walked out of the room himself, and turned off the lights. Which was a pity, since if had looked closer he would've noticed that her hair had begun to darken. An hour later she had started breathing again and her eyes closed and she drifted into a peaceful sleep as her body began to change in more extreme ways. Nearly twenty-four hours later she woke up, and thinking it was just a dream put her hand to her face, she then felt something wrong with how the contact between her hand and face felt. Stifling a scream she made her way to the thin bar of light that indicated the underside of a door, and slipped on a liquid film causing her to go dead first into the door. Holding back tears, knowing that if she was found by the person who gave her the injection it would be bad, she fumbled around the edges for a light switch. She turned it on, not realizing that she could see almost perfectly in the small amount of light from under the door. Looking around the room she saw a large mirror, that unknown to her was used so that actual volunteers could see the results. She started hyperventilating when she saw what she looked like. Her hair had darkened to a storm gray, and small crimson scales had sprouted over her body. The largest sized scale was the size of a dime, and was mostly on the parts of her body that don't move, such as the forearms, upper arms, thighs, and lower legs. Most of the scales however were a centimeter across. Her face was pretty much clear of scales, eyes had become emerald and slitted like a reptiles, her nails has turned into small claws, and lastly she had developed small fangs. Other than those changes she retained the same shape as before, at least until she noticed her draconic wings, when she did she instinctively flexed her will causing them to vanish. When they did, she said dejectedly to herself, "I'm a freak, a monster." She felt a small drain on her reserves when she made the wings disappear. Slightly less panicked, she searched for clothes, and she found some. Taking the black all encompassing cloak that was way too large for her she used a scalpel to cut it down so she wouldn't be dragging it badly, and used bandages to wrap up and hide her arms and to improvise a foot covering, although she had a feeling that she didn't need it anymore. She also found her clothes from when she was kidnapped, and put them on. Slipping on the cloak, and moving quietly she managed to get out of the seemingly abandoned base.
Unknown to her, the base was abandoned, as the snake sanin liked to rotate his small experimental bases so that too many people wouldn't vanish in a row in the same location.
An hour after she left a sound genin entered the base and came out fifteen minutes later completely confused.
A month later she was outside a small village. During her trip she found out she could do some odd things by experimenting with an odd power that she had obtained because of the experiment. She had made her cloak unable to be removed unless she was the one doing it, and made the hood cover her face in perpetual shadow. Also during the trip she had obtained some fine pelts from the animals she had killed for food, and decided to keep them to sell. Near the village she decided to sell her pelts there, so she walked in. The villagers shied away from her as she came off as slightly creepy wearing a fairly ratty black cloak with hood. The girl walked to the general store, went in, and waled up to the counter.
"I would like to sell these pelts," the girl said quietly with a nearly imperceptible hiss to her 's's, and set some wolf, fox, and a bear pelt on the counter.
The man looked at the pelts, and noticing there quality, quoted a good, and fair price.
The girl nodded her agreement, and set some stuff she wished to purchase on the counter, "I would like to purchase these as well."
The man looked at what the girl had put on the counter, they consisted of some clothes, some canned goods, a small sewing kit, and a small package of candy. "Very well, Here is the remainder of the money for the pelts, and if you obtain more I will be more than willing to buy them off of you."
The girl nodded as she took the money and pocketed it, and using a bag made by tying off the cloth she had cut from her cloak, began to leave the store, but was stopped when the storekeeper asked, "Whats your name?"
After a moments hesitation she responded in her soft voice, "My name is, Kaida Koneko ." Before leaving the shop.
Eating a candy from the bad on her way out of the village to set up a place to stay caused her to gag. The candy, which was once her favorite, now tasted disgusting. She passed a child on her way out and dropped the bag of candy in the child's hands after saying, "Here." before walking out of the village.
End prologue.