Chapter 2
A Missing Dragon

The large hallway was dimly lit as Kenshin and Sano made their way towards Aoshi's part of their home. As they were opening the door, Aoshi was standing up from a crouch having just changed from his dragon form. His startling ice blue eyes and cool demeanor were the only things that hinted at his element.

"I received your message, Himura." He said simply, taking his phone out of his pocket to check for any messages that could have come during his flight.

"I am afraid we have no more than what I've sent you before. Just the two names, Kaoru and John, and some pieces of another language I can't place. She had nothing when I found her, not even ID. Unfortunately Megumi has been trying to stabilize her and hasn't been able to study her energy levels further than necessary and all she can tell me is the energy on her is completely foreign to us. A bond of hers was broken, but that should have killed her." Kenshin explained as he watched Aoshi unlocking the security on the computer that was resting on the only set of furniture in the large stone room: A desk and office chair.

"Why should she have died?" Sano said, leaning up against the wall, chewing on a thumb cuticle.

"Because she doesn't just look fully human, she is fully human." growled Kenshin. This whole situation was making him angrier than he usually was. He needed a dragon, not the quiet, distant, pale little thing he had found. He felt the scar on his cheek throb in time with his pulse and he fought to keep his emotion in check. He wondered if the slash up his face had started to bleed again. He needed to talk with Megumi again after this.

"Misao will be..." Aoshi had started, not looking up from his computer. However, his eyes darted up when the loud, high pitched tones of a young female dragon in her tiny human form echoed into the room.

"...Here!" She finished his sentence as she bounded into the room, holding onto her computer tablet and letting her loose fitting dragon clothing billow behind her. Her tight braid whipped around and almost hit both Sano and Kenshin as she passed. Kenshin hadn't moved as the young dragon practically bounded over the desk to greet her mate with a small kiss and nuzzle and then turned to face Kenshin and Sano. "I got started as soon as Aoshi told me what you knew and I have results!" She moved to the smooth wall behind the desk and found the cord she was looking for, still talking. "Her full name is Kaoru Kamiya, Japanese, good student, heir to a dojo and fighting style, went to a university in America, studied Engineering officially, but took just as many courses in the Liberal arts. I think she just started going to school for fun at that point. Several posts in other languages, I'll look at those later. Then she traveled off across the pond to Europe hitting several places including Italy, Switzerland, a jaunt over to the UK, France, Germany, India, Pakistan..."

"Misao," Sano said, a grin playing on his face, "How can you possibly know all this?"

"Easy!" She said, finally getting her tablet to turn on and pressing a button where it was connected to the cord in the wall, her screen pulled up on the large empty wall for all to see. "See! Facebook!" Kenshin looked at the profile picture that was being projected onto the wall. The bright blue eyes of Kaoru sparkled as she laughed, sitting precariously on a stone lion as though she were riding a horse, in front of a large museum. Kenshin couldn't help but smile as he could imagine the security guard chasing her off. Because she would have teased him and ran, he could tell by the impish gleam in her eye. Her photo was so different than the frail little thing he had brought back, he wondered if he had looked like her after... he shook himself and focused on the conversation so he didn't have to think back. He cheek was hurting again, and he resisted the urge to touch his scar.

Sano rolled his eyes. "I'm not sure that counts as research..."

"Yeah, it does have it's limits. She didn't log on at all over seas, I had to hack the location indicator on her phone camera, which, thankfully she used despite not calling anyone, Which involved hacking her phone which I had to find the number of through facebook and..." Here she stopped as Aoshi looked up from his computer. She always talked too much, but whenever Aoshi had something to say she instantly stilled, sometimes mid-word, to focus her attention on him.

"Her bond mate is harder to pin down. She has several friends named John on facebook, but none of them have been anywhere near her in years and none of them are one of us. There are also no dragons known to go by this name officially, and she seems to have had no relationship at all with any dragon as far as we can tell. No one has died that she knows, aside from family members who are not dragon, so there is no reason for her to be dying from a broken bond. The only thing that would sever a bond in that way is the death of her mate." Aoshi went back to his files as Misao brought up the images from her phone. Kenshin was mulling over the information he'd just been given. Nothing about this human made any sense to him. His frown deepened. What had hurt her? Who had hurt her? Sano whistled at the number of photos, breaking Kenshin's train of though, and even Kenshin had to quirk and eyebrow.

"Over 5000 photos, really?"

"Well, she had just gotten back from her world tour." Misao shrugged, "Maybe she likes to document everything?" From the small icons of photos he could see, Kenshin had to agree, that there seemed to be an obsessiveness to her photo taking, with several duplicates of each scene. There were landscapes, and cloudscapes, and buildings, and groups of flowers, some photos of crowds and people, these people looked Indian to him, and food and animals and everything. Except pictures of her and other people. He recognized several famous places as Misao scrolled as quickly as she could through the mass of photos.

"Check her friends for connections with our world and find her most active ones. Perhaps one of them can tell us something. See if there are any photos that can give us any clues. We won't have more than this information and whatever else you can dig up to go through until she wakes up." Kenshin turned and left, followed by Sano. Kenshin stopped at the doorway, and turned to face the taller one following him. "Sano, stay and see what you can find about her family. They might not know anything since she has no dragon blood herself, but maybe they can point us into the right direction. I'll return after I've talked with Megumi." Kenshin ignored the small pout Sano had tried to hide. He knew Sano enjoyed tormenting their healer, but Kenshin needed her to be kept free from distraction.

A/N - Wow, I feel so out of sorts with writing. I haven't written my own story in years. Thank you to everyone who has read, and a big super thank you for each of my two reviewers! I'll try to keep chapters coming, and try to keep my writing somewhat decent despite my lack of practice. I hope I'll get better! Let me know what you think, and Enjoy!