(DON'T) BREAK A LEG
A/N: MaiBeyblader's pairing idea.
--
"Hey, Kitt. Good luck."
"Yeah, break a leg!" she snapped at him. The spoiled Sun City brats were really starting to scrape her scales with their taunts about street scavengers, and she wasn't going to take it from older enemies, either.
"Try not to, Kitt," he answered.
She took in a sudden breath, and glared at him. It was her line; since when did he get to steal it?
"No, I mean it," he said. He took a quick glance around them, and actually grinned at her. "It's us against them, you know? Under the circumstances?"
The circumstances being, Kitt knew rather too well, the absence of both Artha and Moordryd. Yet again. Too bad stableboy was getting to be such a big Academy star; they might have had him actually face the music otherwise.
The racer next to Kitt, a tall golden-skinned girl with a mane of immaculately braided red hair and a pure-bred dragon to match, snickered. "Aww, someone's missing their little friends. Is it true that you Down City crews can't even lift a finger without your leaders telling you what to do?"
Kitt lifted her middle finger, just as the starter blocks came down; Sangriall and Cain both raced off, leaving her to catch up.
She swore under her breath. Scale it scale it scale it...
Wyldfyr ran; she concentrated on releasing the mag-energy from them both as they'd been taught, channelling it out behind them to speed up. Ahead, Sangriall and her Cruci slowed as they began the obstacle course; not as daring as Pyrrah would have forced them to become if they'd been in her Crew, Kitt thought gleefully as she activated her thruster gear, flying nimbly between the turnstiles and the trapdoors.
She was alongside Elayn and his Energy-class dragon now, speeding through the course ruthlessly as his balance gear enabled him to gracefully negotiate the curves; one of Sangriall's friends, she was eager to defeat him.
He smiled at her, almost sincerely, as they drew neck and neck to each other.
"You're pretty good after all, Wann--you remind me of the ocean," he called to her.
The first phrase of a famed romantic poem. Eyes like the ocean, the blue draconium shining...
Startled, she glared at him; if anything he fitted the description, his perfect tan offset by deep blue eyes and dark loose hair. Typical Sun City boy...
"Wet!" he called to her as his Aqua Gear exploded, spattering her and Wyldfyr as he gained the lead.
She set off a fast-burn activation to clear them of water, and kept up the race. Sangriall emerged with them to smoother ground, and immediately sped up; she looked back to see Cain and another Sun City student still navigating through the obstacle course. Too bad she'd have to carry his wish of a Down City racer winning on her own, but then again she wanted to win for herself a lot more.
She applied reverse thrusters, and then suddenly turned them while activating Aero gear to jump along the slippery slope to the bend; she made the turn quickly, her balance gear sending sparks across the track. Wyldfyr righted himself and she raced neck-and-neck with Elayn, Sangriall just behind them.
The turnstiles whirred around them, and then trapping gear activated on the side of the track; she took a deep breath as she and Wyldfyr dodged the obstacles, rappelling up to avoid them and coming back down slightly ahead of both the Sun City racers.
She still had plenty of juice in her thrusters; she geared them into full power, only to see Elayn catch up again, and urged Wyldfyr forward as the finish loomed before them. She was a hair ahead now, half a dragonhead--
--and then she heard the sound behind her, and was knocked back by a dual mag-blast as Elayn and Sangriall finished just ahead of her.
--
"That wasn't fair!" she yelled as Elayn rode away on Deulac, ignoring her entirely; she turned to Sangriall, but the girl paid her no attention, laughing as Cain finished his race in second last place. "Hello?"
"Poor showing today, street kid," she said to him, flicking her hair back from her face. "And yet you look like one of us, and your master Paynn doesn't." Her glance raked him up and down, as though she was a dragonhawk staring at a tasty fieldmouse. "Why is that?"
"He's not my master. He's my friend," Cain said.
She laughed. "Then why is it he abandons you here? You're far more pleasant without him, I assure you. Not as uppity as some," she added, not bothering to glance over to Kitt with her slanted amber eyes.
"He doesn't abandon me!" Cain said hotly.
Sangriall shook her mane again. "Look around you, Down City boy."
"Leave him alone!" Kitt spat, frustrated with all Sangriall's offences, even to the extent of defending Cain. "You're pathetic! Even he's a better racer than you!"
"Even me?" Cain frowned. "Jeez. Thanks a whole lot, Kitt."
Sangriall patted his arm. "Never mind her, dear. Keep working on your courtesies...and maybe you'll pass for one of us someday."
With a sway of her hips, she walked away next to her dragon, her hair swinging behind her.
"Drac moves, Cain. I thought you handled those obstacles really well," Gwynde, who'd come in last, said to him. "Don't mind Sangriall, she's just a little shy sometimes. San, wait up!" she called to her, and Kitt watched them walk away together.
Kitt sighed heavily.
Little shy?
"They're weird," Cain said, and turned away from her.
--
Artha had been present for the first period, the gear class, but vanished mysteriously just before the Dragon Care lesson following that, before she'd even had a chance to talk to him.
Absent: from the tenth claw to–- she wrote down, hoping he'd manage to turn up. She was alone, Parm having been moved into the more difficult theoretical classes and less challenging practicals.
"You finished the homework?" Gwynde asked Cain. "San and I worked together on it. We thought question five was really difficult..."
"Although of course we finished in the end," Sangriall added, and before Kitt could blink snatched her scroll from her desk. "Let's see how Down City kids do without their precious Crew-leaders with them...oh, I see, you didn't even answer question three. Top form, Wann!"
Artha hadn't even started, last time she'd heard from him.
Moordryd laughed. "Meathead Kitt, didn't they call her once?"
More laughter. She grabbed her paper back from Sangriall, trying to stop herself from blushing.
"That was before they called her Street Kitt," he continued. "Way deep in Down City, of course."
Great. She didn't know which of them annoyed her more.
Sangriall laughed. "Hypocrite, Paynn. If it wasn't for your father's gear-peddling you'd be the same as her."
"Yeah, and if your grandmother hadn't been a whore--" Kitt smiled; she wasn't that good on research, but she'd bothered for this.
"Courtesan," Sangriall corrected with a shrug. "They say I inherited her looks." She turned to Cain. "You don't find many Dragon Priests here," she said by way of explanation.
"Whore," Moordryd muttered; Kitt decided she rather agreed with him for once. It wasn't like Grainne Magda had found her way to Sun City by her abilities, and Sangriall herself wasn't as great as she thought.
"Silence, class." Kitt looked up to see the instructor, marching into the room with her typical grim look. She pointed to the board with her claw, and the top half clashed down to reveal writing. "Copy this down."
Claw rot is typically caused by a combination of damp weather and excessive purple draconium...
Moordryd, across from her, fiddled in his bag for a pen; Elayn handed one to him, and as he pressed it to the paper the back of it exploded, spattering dark ink over his face.
Kitt laughed, and saw her amusement mirrored in Sangriall's face; Moordryd flung himself to his feet, placing a hand over his face, and stormed out.
"Yes, you'd better clean yourself up, Mister Paynn," the instructor said. "Really, I wish you people would stop having these silly accidents in my class. Next person to disrupt the lesson gets detention--for a week."
Kitt looked across at Sangriall, who was exchanging a thumbs-up with Elayn; next to her, Cain seemed on the point of rushing out after Moordryd, but in response to the instructor's threat slumped in his seat.
Next person gets detention, Kitt thought. Sangriall would be ideal.
Slipping quick glances at her as she continued to copy down the lesson, Kitt remembered a strategy she'd used to win her first race here, against them.
Don't put in the work if you don't need to. Your enemy can think up all the ways you can attack them on their own.
She kept shooting brief glances in Sangriall's direction, also including a bemused-looking Cain, until she was sure she was infuriating the Sun City girl. She looked again, one final time, and saw Sangriall's fingers starting to glow with red mag-energy, a threat that she would fight back by any means necessary; Kitt pretended to ignore that, and turned her attention back to the lesson.
And then as the instructor turned her back to write something on the board, Kitt saw her opportunity; she flung out her hand in Sangriall's direction, a small amount of mag-energy sparkling into the air, in exactly the right direction as to cause a disturbance at Sangriall's desk.
Sangriall was ready, of course, and she fired her mag-blast. It easily overwhelmed Kitt's, who ducked, of course, prepared; and then it hit the teacher's grey-cloaked back.
She turned suddenly, seeing Sangriall with open palm still out, and slammed the blackboard ruler down on Sangriall's desk with a clang that almost shook the room.
"Out of my class," she hissed, "and you will report to me afterwards to discuss your detention."
Sangriall gathered up her books, two bright red spots appearing on her cheeks; Kitt smiled to herself as she flung herself out of the door.
"Perhaps we will finally have some peace this lesson." The instructor's cold face wiped out Kitt's elation. "Turn to the fifth page of your scrolls. Copy out that information--twice, and complete the twenty questions up on the board."
There were slight groans all around the room, but none dared to protest more audibly, and silence reigned for the rest of the lesson.
--
She saw Gwynde and Sangriall, later, the darker girl with an arm around her red-haired friend, apparently comforting her about the detention; Sangriall flashed her a brief glare, then turned and left.
Gwynde's lips tightened as she marched over to Kitt. "This has gone too far. You shouldn't have set her up like that!"
"She started it," Kitt protested, realising as she did so that she sounded childish. She tried again. "It just goes to show. Don't mess with us."
"You mean with you," Gwynde said. "I'd challenge you--if I didn't know you knew nothing about it!"
She turned her back on Kitt, rushing off in pursuit of her friend; Kitt frowned. She knew that Gwynde was the heir to Clarion Gear, whereas Sangriall's Family seemed more known for their antics than anything else; but Sangriall had done much the same to her yesterday.
About as shy as a bloody hydrag, Kitt decided, and went off to search for Artha, passing Cain chatting with a bunch of them on the way.
--
After dinner and seeing that Artha hadn't returned, she walked to his assigned dormitory, wondering if he'd finally made it back. There was Cain, lurking around the area; they pretended that they hadn't seen each other as they paced, so as to avoid trouble.
She grew tired of it after a while; this was stupid, and she'd let Artha suffer the consequences of his absences on his own. Let him damn well call her if he wanted the homework, she wasn't his loyal and faithful dragon of legend to follow him around...
She left, passing a depressed-looking Cain on her way out.
--
A racing competition. She sat in the audience, watching Artha and Moordryd showing off their mag-moves, blasting each other and flying along as though gravity didn't exist for them.
"Full mag-inversion!" she heard Gwynde comment. "I don't believe it!"
"I suppose," Sangriall said ungraciously. "Really they're just flashy, honestly, typical Down City..."
"First place, Moordryd Paynn!"
Artha crossed the line a second later.
"Second place, Artha Penn! A thrilling finish!"
A sulky-looking Artha joined Moordryd and the third place winner on the dais; Kitt cheered for him, because after all he was still her friend, and even in second place was still tied with Moordryd in top ranking. He brightened up as the Academy official pinned the ribbon on his jacket, though, and called up something to his rival, who responded with some taunt of his own.
"You know what this means, don't you Kitt?" Parm yelled across to her.
"Academy-standard victory party!" she returned.
--
He'd left early.
At his own party.
Kitt scrunched up her drink can into a ball. "Parm, where is he?"
Parm shrugged. "Don't know!" he called over the music. "Probably somewhere important!" He returned to his version of dancing, his limbs flying everywhere as he tried to imitate the green-haired girl opposite him.
"Screw this," Kitt muttered, aiming her drink into the bin and not caring when it hit a Sun City student's leg instead.
Absent: own victory party, at some point between the twenty-first claw and...
She heard the sounds of another party going on as she prowled the halls, purplish light coming out of a rather dark room; Moordryd's, probably. She could see Cain in there, his large silhouette wearing a party hat.
She could go to the library; maybe he was down there on some errand for Mortis, and she needed it anyway. She took the long way in case she'd see him, and looked down in the archives before coming out again with the gear-tech book she needed for her assignment; Cain was there on her way out, the party hat dangling miserably from his palm.
"Hey, Kitt?" he called. "Is that the book for the class?"
"Yeah." She shrugged, walking past him; Artha obviously wasn't anywhere she knew about (no big crimes in progress that she'd heard about, no new ancient artefacts Mortis had troubled to inform her concerning, nowhere in the Academy as far as she'd seen), and she might as well return to the dormitories.
"You haven't seen Moordryd anywhere around, have you?" he asked her.
"Nope," she returned.
Funny. She was starting to be almost civil to him.
--
"Kitt!"
Artha at last, up on her screen as the Dragon Booster.
"Where the hellfire have you been?" she yelled.
"I need you and Parm and Lance," he answered. "The Shadow Booster's searching for an ancient map hidden in a temple! We gotta stop him!"
She sighed. "Send me the coordinates," she said grudgingly.
--
Wandering across the Wastelands of Lorne with Parm and Lance, they came across the Dragon Booster battling the Shadow Booster, in front of a sealed cavern marked with the Dragon Priests' symbol as Mortis observed them all.
"Analyzing environmental data, I can map out a path with which it would be possible for one of us to distract the Shadow Booster with my disrupter mine!" Parm said into his comm.
"Hand it over." Kitt snatched it from his saddle.
"No. This is between me and the Shadow Booster!" Artha yelled, unleashing a mag-storm at him; Kitt sighed, wishing that it was so much as possible for them to intervene between the two armoured figures. It wasn't fair, sitting around and doing nothing...
She reluctantly replaced the mine. "Why'd you want us anyway, stable boy?"
"Because we're a team!" he called back.
"No, we're your personal cheer squad," Kitt muttered just as Lance yelled encouragement to Artha, warning him about the Shadow Booster's mag-trap.
The Shadow Booster defeated and running, the three of them walked down to the area to join Mortis.
"Your energies combined will seal off the cave entrance so that he cannot return," Mortis said.
Kitt took a deep breath as mag-energy spooled from her and Wyldfyr, dragged with Parm's and Lance's to be guided by Artha; the rocks glowed, and then were joined together in a single, smooth wall.
She sagged as Artha stopped, exhausted; when she looked up again, he was gone.
"Where'd--" Lance looked puzzled. "Artha, wait!"
Mortis sighed. "Let him face the challenge a second time, I suppose. He knows what he's doing."
"I'm going after him!" Kitt called, and rode away on Wyldfyr.
He couldn't have gone that far; she even came across Cain (Moordryd worked with the Shadow Booster, probably tagging along too) as she searched the area, but could find no sign of Artha.
--
Mag-teleportation, she realised, seeing him easily perform the manoeuvre in class. Jerk...
He disappeared after class, yet again (absence: eleventh claw to--never as far as I'm concerned, it's about wanting to know more than it's about actually caring!), and she wandered over to the bulletin board to see the announcements flicker across in bold blue and gold.
Bad colours.
A gear competition for eggheads like the Professor (pass it onto him later, if he doesn't know already), a fourth-year open exhibition in a few days (skip, the gear assignment's due the day after), and the one everyone standing around her seemed to be talking about, a dance.
Well, she sure wouldn't be going with Artha, even if he saw the error of his ways and managed to spend enough time with her to ask her. Another girl, maybe? she wondered about the absences. But there was no real reason why he wouldn't have been honest with her, and the gossip would have spread around the Academy. More likely to be the saving-the-world stuff she couldn't seem to help with any more.
Damn it.
She looked up to see Cain chatting to Gwynde, and then was shoved out of the way by Sangriall, who looked over the dance notice and then turned aside, approaching her friend.
"Cain!" Sangriall called to him, reaching inside her pack and pulling out a book. "I see no objection in you escorting me to the dance, providing you make sure to read this first."
Basic Etiquet, Kitt could make out on the book's title where Sangriall's long fingernails didn't cover it. Cain looked confused for a moment, and took it from her.
How humiliating. He's even helping her.
"Thanks," he said, placing it inside his pack, "but no thanks."
Sangriall let out a slight gasp; she marched to Gwynde, took her by the arm, and then exited, accompanied by the laughter at their joke.
"Real bright, Cain," she said to him as they went to class.
He looked puzzled. "You think I should have said yes? I might have, but she's even more excitable than Moordryd."
"Excitable? I'd go with something more like--oh, total bitch, red draconium attitude as big as Mid City, rabid crow-drag with a giant dragon-sized chip on her shoulder..."
Cain looked vaguely shocked. "Yeah, I guess she might seem that way," he said as they passed under the Sky Arena, and pointed up. "See her up there?"
Kitt looked through the projector set into the ceiling that showed the view from the Arena, and saw her battling Elayn, releasing mag-bursts that looked pretty deadly as he retaliated. "Elayn? I thought they were friends..."
"They are," said Cain.
"So why doesn't she just go with him already and leave us alone?"
"Because he's holding out for Brak, the captain of the fourth-year exhibition team," Cain explained, as though he were a mother slowly reading Dragonspot to a toddler. "He probably won't get him, but Sangriall can't ask him to go with her or else everyone will know that he's only said yes because she's his friend and he feels sorry for her. And there's not that many people interested in her, for reasons other than her personality. So she asked me and assumed I'd say yes, but the problem is that now everyone knows that."
"Okay, I get the thing with Elayn," Kitt said. "But you're talking like she actually wanted you to say yes. She humiliated you!"
Cain shook his head. "No, she didn't. She was trying to leave herself an easy out, but it backfired."
"I still don't get it," Kitt said. "She's Sun City, we're the lowly Down City Crew members."
"It's weird, yeah, and we still got to beat them," Cain said. "But look at Sentrus, maybe even Artha and Moordryd. They still accept us, it just takes a little longer. You just have to get that they duel and ally and betray and sneer as a matter of course, because it fits some convention or because their Families want to make a profit or whatever."
"And you've figured out the conventions, have you?" Kitt said.
"No, but I'm going to read that book." He shrugged. "Also, I'm an orphan."
Obvious enough from the Dragon Eye tattoo on his face; Crew-foundlings were common enough.
"So what?" She was as well, and Artha, Lance and Parm only had two frequently absent parents between them; it didn't make them any more popular.
"I spread a rumour that I'm the Headmaster's, Dragon Master Akarai's, Champion Breakfire's and Dragon Master Telos' secret lovechild."
Kitt raised an eyebrow. "That's one hell of a foursome."
--
He'd gone in one end of the Hive Track alongside her, but by the time she'd gotten out he wasn't around any more.
"Penn?" Gwynde said. "Yeah, he went back in, Magna Draconis knows why. Have you got a date for the dance yet?"
"I thought I'd...skip it..." Kitt said. Lame, lame, lame...
"You can't skip it," Gwynde said, looking appalled; even her Sky-class dragon looked like he was sneering, and flicked his spiked tail as though he'd float high above her and Wyldfyr.
"It's Sun City tradition," Sangriall chimed in, Cruci pacing restlessly beside her. "Mandatory attendance--or face permanent social penury."
"Well, I'm sure I'll find a date who won't turn me down," Kitt said, and headed back into the Hive with Wyldfyr.
--
An endless sequence of identical yellow nodes, only distinguishable by the various traps hidden within; Kitt hunted within them, avoiding a dragscorpion pit, walls of spikes, trapdoors and sudden sharp slopes.
She groaned. What the Magna Draconis did Artha think he was doing?
A sudden flicker of movement.
"C'mon, Wyldfyr. He's not getting away this time."
They hastened to catch up, navigating the difficult network where everything looked the same; and then they collided.
"Cain? What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking for Moordryd. What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking for Artha. He just keeps...disappearing, and I don't know why..."
"Same for Moordryd."
They stared at each other, and Kitt whipped out her notebook.
"Artha missing: from the tenth claw on the eighteenth until the twelfth, from the twelfth a day after that to the twenty-second or so, the twenty-first to the second the next day on the twenty-first..."
"That's about when Moordryd's been missing too," said Cain, holding out a sheet of parchment from his pack to compare with Kitt's. "I've got his schedule right here--dragon care class, gear class, victory party...all missing, just like Artha's!"
They stared at each other in dawning realisation.
"He just disappears suddenly! Even when he--I mean, when the Dragon Booster was fighting the Shadow Booster, he just ran off immediately afterwards! And he never tells us anything!"
"It's the same for Moordryd. We're supposed to be friends, and he says he doesn't want to tell me. But even after he--uh, after the Shadow Booster was fighting the Dragon Booster, he went straight off! The time you were looking for Artha," he added.
Kitt's eyes widened. "I didn't see Moordryd there. He's the Shadow Booster!" She slapped her palm to her forehead. "I should've known!"
Cain looked taken aback at her deduction, and then rallied. "And Artha's the Dragon Booster, isn't he?" he said. "They hate each other--it's no wonder they're the opposing Boosters as well! Why didn't I think of it before?"
Kitt sighed. "I guess that makes us both idiots. Why don't we find out together what they've been doing?"
Cain extended a hand to her. "It's a deal."
--
"Breaking news! High mag-energy levels have been reported down in the Wastelands of Loane! Our source suggests yet another climatic battle between the Dragon Booster and the mysterious entity known as the Shadow Booster, but as yet we have no confirmation. On to the weather, Ryann!"
Kitt pulled the headphones from her ears, and looked around surreptitiously at the class, still working on the assigned questions while the instructor was briefly absent.
"Cain!" she hissed, just as the instructor swept back into the room; he didn't seem to notice.
She unscrewed the parts of her pen, letting the ink pool at the end, and then carefully replaced it.
"Oh, your pen's run dry, Cain. Use mine," she said, passing hers over in full view of the instructor.
He looked puzzled, but took it anyway. As he pressed it on the page; it exploded, spilling a jet of ink onto his neck.
"Oh no, I'm so sorry, I'll help you clean up!" She rushed to him, starting to clean off the ink with tissues and in the process getting it spread over herself as well as the desk; the instructor scowled.
"Go and clean up outside this classroom," she said.
"What was that for?" Cain asked, bewildered, as they left.
"News of Artha and Moordryd," Kitt said. "We gotta get down to the wastelands, stat!"
--
Cain pulled out a scanner from his pack. "Draconium energy scanner, built for wraith dragons," he explained, "but it should detect the black draconium concentation in Moordryd's armour--ah, over there. Right near that mountain."
They advanced, cautious of hydrags; Kitt threw a fire grenade to cover them while Cain laid down trapping gear, and they raced to the scene of the battle.
Kitt glanced dubiously at the dark cave entrance in the side of the mountain. "Are you sure it's in the mountain and not behind?" she asked.
"Positive." Cain turned his back to her and activated his VIDDcomm, keeping her out of sight on it. "Come in, Moordryd. I'm nearby, just give me the signal if you want some backup."
Kitt did the same. "Artha? I'm right here. You okay?"
"Stay away, Cain!" Moordryd yelled as the comm crackled. "I can handle this on my own!"
"Sorry, Kitt," Artha said to her. "It's just I have to--fight this--by myself--"
"Dragon Booster! Put up a mag-field to stop those dragons so that I can set off the trap on them!" they heard Moordryd yelling.
"No! If we both use our mag--energy at the same time, we can defeat these things--eergh!"
Cain and Kitt exchanged a long glance, and both reached up to activate their thermal goggles.
"Yup. It's down to us," Kitt said as they advanced into the cave.
--
Bare stone walls and floors, at first; and then images of red and light green dragons running in tandem, beginning to be interspersed with translucent circles as red draconium flows filled the cave with heat and light, hiding most of the drawings.
"I think this is an ancient outpost," Cain said.
"No kidding. There are ancient cave paintings, the way the Dragon Booster and the Shadow Booster are so into it and the way it must have been down her for thousands of years, but just which of those gave you that idea?"
Cain ignored her. "No, seriously," he said as he looked at one section of wall. "The dragons are also pictograms in ancient Draconian."
"And, what, you actually read them?"
"No, but I know a couple of them," Cain said. "That one there." He pointed to a red dragon, poised in battle-like stance with a light green dragon in front of her. "It means danger."
They advanced through the caves, seeing the ancient remnants of the past; Kitt looked down at a map traced on her VIDDscreen, showing the various locations she'd visited around the wastelands before.
"Moordryd was looking for an ancient map kept by the Dragon Priests before, a guide to an area he said contained lots of traps," Cain said to her. "He also said that he'd seen one of those weird orange dragons lurking around, and thought they were after the same thing he was."
Kitt took in a sharp breath. "Yeah! This is pretty close to Prophet territory, anyway. And Artha's met the Keepers down near here as well." She gestured to the light green dragons on the wall. "Maybe this is..."
The floor suddenly gave way beneath them.
"Where the map was to?" Cain asked dryly as they plummeted to their doom.
Kitt activated her rappel gear to grip to the edge of the floor above them, and pinned Cain in her tandem gear.
"He said it was one of those ancient caves...designed to test the unworthy..." Cain continued helpfully as she and Wyldfyr struggled to pull them up with mag-energy. "An ancient warrior who worked with the Keepers, we didn't know who..."
Kitt grunted as they jerked gradually upwards. She could almost reach up to touch the floor now, an inch away from safety--
--which, of course, was when her rappel gear just had to give way, and which was when Cain shot out trapping gear to bind them to the surface, and activated his Aero gear to swing them over onto safe ground.
"Not bad," she said grudgingly.
"...So anyway, it's all about who's worthy," Cain said, and ducked as the dragons on the wall began to spit fire at them. "Run!"
They raced past the fiery banks, and then looked back as the floor collapsed behind them, leaving only an empty canyon below.
"I guess we've got to go on," Kitt said, pointing to the ramp in front of them. "Red thrusters before the rest of it falls in, now!"
The ramp was steep and slippery, almost impossible to negotiate; they jury-rigged a tandem/Aero arrangement to help them continue, Kitt's greater Red energy and Cain's navigation keeping them just safe enough from sliding back and down into the pit or perishing on one of the spikes flashing out from the walls.
At last, it seemed to calm. They entered a corridor with a light green floor and translucent walls, seemingly made of grey glass mixed with spatters of various draconium colours, though of course something that fragile would not have lasted long in here. Cain reached out a hand to touch it; Kitt pulled him back.
"I've been kidnapped by weird swirly draconium energy before," she told him. "Don't touch!"
"All right," he said, and looked down through it at the cave below; they must have climbed higher than she had thought, Kitt decided. There was an awful lot of cave down there, ornamented with rivers of more red draconium.
And green dragons, she noticed, milling around on the ground there. Cain pulled out his binocs to get a closer look, and turned back to her with a worried look on his face.
"I think those dragons are being controlled by something," he said. "They've got some sort of control gear on--like a combination of wraith and Nero gear, only orange. Like their eyes..." He shuddered. "I'm scared, Kitt."
Kitt took a look herself; the dragons certainly weren't moving around in the same sort of patterns you saw ordinary dragons socialising in, and she recognized Prophet forcing gear.
"You're right, I've seen that kind of gear before," she said. "We've got to keep going, anyway."
They advanced through the passage, in silence bar for their dragons' footsteps; whatever the material was, it seemed to insulate them from sound.
And then, Cain pointed wordlessly to a scene below them; she didn't need to ask him about what he'd noticed.
The Dragon Booster and the Shadow Booster, working together to battle the controlled green dragons. Both nearly overwhelmed.
She swung her fist at the wall, and it yielded for her, enveloping her hand.
"Kitt--"
It reddened around her arm, and then tightened around it; Cain pulled her back, stumbling against the opposite wall, which did not do the same for him.
She looked down at her wrist, coated with red draconium; it hardened as she watched, into a sharp red thing that covered her forearm.
"What's that?" Cain cried.
"I don't know. We've got to save them!" she yelled, and slammed Wyldfyr into the wall again; this time, it did not yield. "We--"
"Moordryd, we're above you, tell us how to get down there!" Cain called into his comm, but received only static in response.
"The walls, we can't reach anyone here!" Kitt clenched her fists. "Let's find whatever there is to be found," she said. "I want enough power to win this!"
Cain looked fearful. "But if the Dragon Booster and the Shadow Booster weren't worthy--what about us?"
Kitt channelled her energy to her thrusters, and set her teeth as she pulled him along with her.
They stood at the edge of another deep canyon after a desperate last-minute brake, Cain's chute gear flapping around them.
As she pulled her head from the fabric, Kitt saw the wall close behind them.
"Oh, this is brilliant," Cain said. "We're even further away from them and we're trapped at the edge of a cliff where we can't contact anyone."
He reached down and picked up a stone.
"I can't see anyone here!" he yelled. "Hello, any ancient warriors home? Anyone want to come and attack us so we don't starve to death out here?"
"Stop it," Kitt hissed to him. "We've...got to find a way across..."
A stone pillar emerged from the darkness, decorated with the symbol of an eye within a circle, a layer of the translucent substance placed over it.
"...Well," Kitt said shakily. "I guess that means someone's home. Or something."
Cain took a deep breath, and guided Coershun onto the pillar. It started to move; Kitt and Wyldfyr hastily jumped behind them.
Not like they had any other choice, Kitt thought, keeping an eye out as they advanced across the canyon, seeing glowing red in the darkness deep below them.
Cain laughed shakily. "I think a Dragon Priest is hiding inside my head."
Great. She wasn't just trapped on a pillar moving across a canyon with red-hot draconium a thousand feet below, she was trapped on a pillar moving across a canyon with red-hot draconium a thousand feet below with someone completely insane.
"He's saying weird things like this is right and the prophecies will come true. Mystical stuff like that, oh it's totally wise and smart to jump onto pillars heading nowhere, Cain."
Kitt sniggered. "Maybe it's your subconscious trying to tell you something, mystic boy."
"No way! It's stupid, I reckon," he said. "Who insists that prophecies have to be fulfilled by leaving our friends alone back there?"
Kitt shrugged. "I dunno, but that's kind of what we do, a lot...trusting in our hearts and all that..."
"The prophets suck," Cain said.
"I'm with you on that one," Kitt replied.
There was a metal pipe, extending from the side of the canyon as they drew closer to it. Kitt saw it start to glow faintly as they were brought closer to it, and shouted out to Cain.
"Jump!" she cried, and helped him balance on Aero gear as her thrusters sent them diving out of the way of the tongue of flame that lanced towards them. "To..."
"There!" He guided them onto another pillar, looking around nervously. "I hope that doesn't happen again...it's..."
Kitt looked around wildly, and jumped again; Wyldfyr and Coershun cried out as they were scorched.
"I--think I knew it was going to happen! It's just--too weird--again!"
She guided them into the air as another fire came below them, taking them to the next pillar.
"It's wrong!" he cried out desperately. "I shouldn't know this, it's mystic and insane--"
"Yeah, and it's working!"
"Jump!" he yelled. "Magna Draconis I don't like this I don't like feeling what's going to happen jump again now..."
Fire from the ceiling, now. Kitt sighed as they found their way through it together, punctuated by Cain's screams and the whining of her gear wearing down.
Solid ground once again, at last; once Cain had told her he wasn't feeling anything else and she'd taken a look around at the jagged stones surrounding them, she dismounted to check her thruster gear. In poor condition, and her Aero gear partly melted by the fires as well; they probably wouldn't be able to make it back the same way. She looked at the pillar disappearing into her distance, and bit her lip.
They were even further away now...
"We're even more trapped," Cain said, echoing her realisation. He slammed a fist into the palm of his left hand. "Follow-your-heart, and wind up somewhere else with hardly a way out! It's doing something to me, I don't know..."
Kitt looked up; there was some sort of path there between the rocks, hard to make out but there, bordered with spikes. "Let's go up," she said. "We'll make it quick!"
She set a fair pace; the red material seemed warm around her arm, and she tried to share energy with Wyldfyr, enabling them to go on.
Cain pointed to lettering, etched into one of the rocks. "Something about...fire, two working together..."
Kitt looked ahead of them; it seemed they were heading towards a central peak as the path narrowed. "You want me to go first?" she asked him.
"You're the better racer," Cain said. "Mag my shield gear to protect you. And..." he paused. "Hurry!"
She took the shield gear, activating it quickly and battering through suddenly-growing spikes; Cain followed behind her. Easy at first to get through them, slim fragile thorns, but gradually hardening and enlarging as the shielding gear became still more battered. They started jumping instead, but the spikes grew to vaster heights as behind her Cain and Coershun both panted.
Well, that leaves one option before we're impaled...
"Do whatever comes to you!" she yelled to Cain, drawing Wyldfyr into a sudden stop as an iron wall loomed before them. "Now!"
She and Wyldfyr magged him, throwing him up in the air; he glanced around wildly, and then signalled to Coershun. She watched him as he fell to the top of a rock that appeared no different from any other, and then slammed down his blocking staff on it. Wyldfyr ran alongside Coershun to the revealed cave, darting down into the small, dark, corridor; Cain was magged along to race beside Kitt, both hastening to their goal.
They stopped, in a small, circular chamber glowing with that translucent shade.
Cain looked around. "This has to be it..." he said.
"Yeah, well, I don't see it." Kitt punched the wall. "I don't get this!"
Cain grabbed her hand, examining the red moulded around her forearm. "It gave this to you. It means something..."
"What?" She snatched it back.
"It's..." His eyes widened. "It's like Moordryd's gauntlet. A bit. What does the Dragon Booster's look like?"
She glanced down at her hand. "Yeah, Artha's got a gauntlet too, but this isn't really like his..."
More irregular than his, certainly, like flames gathered around her hand.
"Like fire," Cain said, and they looked at each other in shock.
"I think I see," Cain said softly, and he held out his hand over the centre of the circle.
Kitt saw pale green light gather atop his palm, shading through other colours; she stepped back as it suddenly shone fiercely, and lowered her hand from her eyes to see him holding a sphere in his hands, filled with shifting colour.
"Say it," he said in a voice that wasn't quite him, and she repeated his last words.
"Like fire...? This is the Fire Booster's armour?" She paused. "Race with fire? Run with fire?...Fight with fire!" she suddenly cried, and felt herself taken by brightness as a red flame appeared in the gauntlet.
She looked down at Wyldfyr, shining-scaled and rearing, and saw her own armour, fearsomely spiked.
"The Fire Booster received aid from the Seer of the Keepers to conceal their powers, for when they would be needed again," Cain said softly in the voice that wasn't his. "Together with the Dragon Booster and Shadow Booster, they saw war's end, as was prophesied..."
Kitt aimed a mag-blast at the wall behind them, barely aware of why she knew to do that, and followed by Cain they returned to that room with the green dragons.
It was...easy. Cain called to her to tell her to find the controlling orange dragon, and she fought her way through the green ones, fresh and ready. She saw him battling alongside Moordryd, as efficiently as though he knew the moves of the foes before they made them (probably true!). He held the crystal ball in one hand as he guided Coershun against the green dragons, throwing out disrupter mines to keep them away. She extended her hand behind her, and a mag-blast appeared from it, giving the three fighters temporary safety.
And there was Propheci in front of her, controlling a human who controlled the dragons; she felt a whip of flame form itself over her armour's gauntlets, and tore the gear from the two of them. The abandoned human looked startled, and then fled; she faced down Propheci, Wyldfyr growling, and he ran.
She removed her amulet as she turned back, and felt immediately drained, leaning against Wyldfyr as she watched her friends on Propheci's screen. Her heart still raced with exhilaration, and she extended a hand in front of her, wondering about the armour that had taken her.
She saw that the green dragons had ceased the fight, wandering confused around the humans; and then she saw Cain drop his crystal ball, watching it shatter into hundreds of teardrop-small fragments.
"What was that?" she heard Moordryd growl.
"The ancient artefact they were guarding." Cain sighed. "Oops."
"Fool," Moordryd grunted. "That thing..."
"It doesn't matter," Artha jumped in. "He saved us both. Along with..."
Kitt flung herself from Propheci's control room. If she was right...
"Along with, uh, an ancient warrior we found, controlled by that crystal ball," she said. "I was helping her deal with Propheci when she just melted away into nothing!"
Would they believe that?
"Thanks, Kitt," Artha said, smiling at her below the mask.
"And you lost that?" Moordryd snapped at Cain. "If we'd only taken control of it..."
Cain folded his arms. "You're welcome. Now let's get out of here."
--
"And the Keepers must thank you again for preserving our hidden secrets, Dragon Booster and friends of the Dragon Booster!"
"We're not his friends," Moordryd said coldly as Stewardd danced around them.
Artha laughed, and punched him in the arm. "Yeah, yeah. I'll beat you enough to convince you someday."
"As if!" Moordryd shoved him in return. "Yeah, good I heroically saved you from the orange dragon invasion, little Keeper. If you want to grant me any favours in return--new powerful gear, lost ancient secrets..."
Cain coughed.
"All right, we saved you," Moordryd corrected.
"And you're not giving the Shadow Booster any gear," Artha said.
Stewardd laughed. "The Boosters must have their little jokes!"
He threw something small in the air to Kitt; she caught it automatically, and saw it was an ancient coin, the images on it almost scrubbed out. Five lines joined on one side, a simple circle on the other...
"Until we meet again, my friends!"
Stewardd scampered away on his equally diminutive dragon, leaving the four to face each other.
Kitt was the first to speak. "I figured out you were the Shadow Booster," she said, pointing to Moordryd. "And you've known he was for a while now, haven't you, Artha?"
"I figured it out already," Cain said as Artha blanched. He glared at Moordryd. "And you knew he was the Dragon Booster, didn't you?"
"It...wasn't really our secret to tell," Artha said, scratching his back nervously. "We just..."
"What were you doing, anyway?" Kitt demanded. She thrust her notebook in Artha's face. "We compared notes. You two, always sneaking off somewhere together to..."
"Fight, of course." Artha removed the amulet and allowed himself to slip back to his normal form, looking puzzled. "We went to have rematches--down here in the wastelands, up in the Academy tracks, even disused street tracks. We thought we were being subtle, like the time Moordryd turned up with ink all over his face..." He laughed, and Moordryd punched him in the arm."I won that time, you know!" Moordryd said, outraged as Artha smirked.
Kitt and Cain looked briefly at each other, the ink stains on their own clothing now replaced with the signs of their adventure.
"So you were fighting? Over and over again? That's it?" Cain asked.
"Well, yeah. What else?" Moordryd asked.
Kitt and Cain exchanged a long glance.
"Let's head home, stableboy," Kitt said at last.
--
She caught up to Cain, after Artha and Moordryd had headed to their section of the dormitories.
"Thanks for not giving me away to them," she said, slightly breathlessly. "I just--wanted to know why you smashed that thing."
He didn't answer at first, and she bit her lip nervously as she waited. "You did it on purpose, didn't you?"
"It sounds crazy," he said. "It was like I could see everything at once--the past, the present, what everyone was going to do in the future and how it was all going to end up. Lots of power. I suppose I should have kept it." He paused. "But I decided--well, it was kind of scary for one thing and I'm glad it's fading now, but more than that I wanted to be myself. I'm official Seer of the Dragon Eyes. The world's already got a Dragon Booster and a Shadow Booster, it doesn't need me on top of them. And I don't have to obey whatever the prophecies say."
She nodded. "I...totally understand," she said. "I was the Fire Booster, and it was exciting, fast. But it still felt like I was someone else, and I don't know about all the power..."
She took his hand, and closed it over the amulet. "Keep it," she said. "I don't want to give it all up, but I want to know someone else is looking after it."
"All right," he said, and they walked along quietly, the coin clinking slightly against her zipper.
"So I guess it's back to being sidekicks again, for now," she said eventually. "You're sticking with Moordryd, right?"
"Yes. He's my friend."
"And I'm with the stableboy. We'll probably save the world again."
Cain paused. "When you say with, is that with-with or just with?"
"What?"
"You and the stablebrat," he explained patiently. "Are we going to see you together next week?"
Kitt blinked. "Oh, yeah, the dance," she said. "Artha's probably not even going to ask me. But I think I know someone else who doesn't have a date."
--
He had asked her after all, three days later; but she had turned him down, with even a slight sense of elation over it.
She'd managed to find a nice enough dress at reasonable price in a Mid City shop, not red like the one at the bottom of her closet she'd originally planned to wear; she grinned at herself in the mirror, shoved a matching purple chopstick in her hair, and went down to attend.
Cain had even brought her flowers, pale blue with a sprig of rosemary attached; she stuck them on her shoulder herself, and allowed him to take her arm, noting that his suit was rather nice. The most clothes she'd ever seen him wear, actually, which was a rather strange thought.
There wasn't exactly a storm of comment about their entry; they barely raised an eyebrow, though Parm across the room did shoot her a slightly shocked look before turning back to the green-haired girl he was chatting with.
"You want to hit the punch?" Cain asked. "I heard Brak was planning to spike it, so it might be good to get in early."
"Sure. You like punch?" Kitt asked, and then mentally kicked herself for it.
"Sure." He took a sip. "They overdid the banana flavour, though. I put in more cherry--a nice pineapple mix, some ginger..."
She laughed. "Cain, Dragon Eye muscleman--cooks?"
"I cook a lot." He reached for a canapé. "Mmm, shrimp and artichoke with a nice sage and cracked pepper seasoning, I might have to ask for the recipe. So what does Kitt Wann, terror of the racetracks, do in her spare time?"
"I read tacky women's magazines. Occasionally," she added. "Nice suit, by the way. Where'd you get it?"
"It's one of Moordryd's dad's old ones. I altered it. Where'd you get your dress?"
"I'll tell you the store name once I finish boggling over the fact that you apparently sew as well. What's your moon sign, and can you mend my socks for me?"
He raised an eyebrow at the questioning, and she kicked herself again. "I guess this is the whole getting-to-know-you part of the teamup deal, isn't it? Three-quarter Abandonn, and no."
"Dreamy, artistic and mercurial according to the astrology columns," Kitt said. "Gotta swear off those things..."
"What are you?"
"One-quarter Drakkus. Fiery, competitive and easily bored. Wanna dance?"
He hesitated, clutching his glass of punch tightly. "I don't know how," he confessed. "I'm sorry; maybe I shouldn't have done this..."
"I'll teach you. C'mon."
She led him out to the dance floor as a new tune started, and told him to watch and learn; he trod on her toes twice, but wasn't bad once he got going.
They drifted past the buffet table again, where Sangriall, Gwynde and Elayn seemed to be enjoying themselves over their drinks; Cain waved.
"Sangriall, I heard you picked up a partial scholarship for that extra work you did on the assignment. Nice one!"
"Thanks!" she called back, and returned to the conversation with her friends.
"Hold on. Sangriall's on a scholarship?" Kitt asked. They weren't supposed to give them out to the Sun City kids; if Sangriall'd snatched it from someone else just for a little extra pocket money she'd...
"Didn't you know?" Cain said. "She's Sun City born, but she's here the same way we are."
So that was why she was so keen to maintain her position in the social and grade hierarchies, and why she was so keen on not getting into trouble. It didn't fully explain her, or make her into someone Kitt was ever going to like; but it was something, she supposed, and maybe she'd get to know Sun City better after all as she made it through the Academy.
"Yeah. Congrats!" she called to Sangriall, who either ignored or didn't hear her, and pulled Cain back into the dance.
Artha and Moordryd entered, late, on opposite sides of the room and dateless; they both approached their friends, though, and retired muttering to each other after Kitt pointed out that their own absences had needed a good deal of explanation which had only provided under duress, and furthermore considering they hadn't previously raised an eyebrow at the association which had very probably saved their lives they had no reason to object now.
The night grew old, and Parm and his girlfriend retired, and Sangriall and Gwynde carried a very drunk Elayn away, and Artha and Moordryd had gone to do Drakkus-knew-what.
She swept him into a corner of the room, and leaned up to place a quick kiss on his cheek. "That was actually fun," she said. "You liked it?"
"Yeah. Definitely, yeah." He patted his cheek as though to be sure she'd really touched him. "Friends now?"
"Maybe," she said, smiling at him; and she took his hand in hers as they walked back.
--