Another relatively long wait, but I'm sure you all know how busy life can get, even before you come down with a cold and still have to do everything. :( Please don't forget to leave comments as support and feedback!
Chapter II
Jake started a new routine. Every evening, when the last of the sunset's reds and pinks were fading into darkness, he reported to his grandfather's.
Lao Shi always greeted him there, wearing his usual blue robe, and confirmed that they had no new leads on the Urban Alchemist's case. Then the old man would lock his shop and make Jake sweep up with his short plastic broom while he himself dusted the inventory and cleaned the white cashier counter.
When they were done cleaning, they headed through the stock room, up the wooden stair case into Lao Shi's tiny kitchen. There was always a map of the city rolled out on the table that was only large enough to seat four. Fu and the kitten were always there, standing on the wooden floorboards by a small bowl of some sort of unidentifiable meat that smelled just strong enough for Jake's human senses to register.
Fu then spent several minutes trying to get the kitten to eat his food while Lao Shi went over the night's patrol with Jake. By the time they left for the dark, usually damp and somewhat chilly streets, the kitten had taken just enough bites that Fu would let him lie on the floor and stare at the little orange bowl the food was in while he left with the dragons on patrol, grumbling about cats.
For hours, they would comb the cool, damp streets and run across petty crimes along the way. But none of them could ever be linked to the Urban Alchemist. Only in the late hours would Jake be sent back home to get some sleep.
In the mornings, Jake would wake up and grab what few supplies he needed for the last days of school.
The afternoons were his.
One particularly cloudy afternoon, Jake went to the skate park with his friends, as usual. The three of them wore matching red and blue helmets and pads in preparation for their up-coming skate-off.
Hot and sweaty, the three of them took a water break. Holding clear plastic cups full of water, they went off to the side of the rink, where a couple of plastic brown picnic tables were placed between the half-pipe and the metal link fence that surrounded the park.
Beyond the fence, Jake spotted something gold shining on the back of a stop sign. It looked like a standard flamel, but the color and the overall neatness of the lines made him wonder if there was an ouroboros at the top of the cross.
It had been there for a while, so Jake didn't bother to check if it was actually the Urban Alchemist's symbol. Besides, if his gramps didn't know about it, he didn't want to be stuck looking into a dead lead on some terrorists who were using a slower method of doing what sorcery could already do.
He propped his skateboard against the side of a picnic table, next to Spud's and Trixie's, and went to lean against the metal net of the fence. "Hope it doesn't rain out the skate-off."
Trixie took a seat on the nearest plastic table's bench. "No kidding. What better way to celebrate the end of school than with that?"
As the friends made light talk, Spud gulped down his water and started trying to balance the empty cup on his nose. He managed it for a good ten seconds before he was startled by someone's "excuse me." The cup fell to the cement and made some light rolling sounds as it moved toward the newcomer, a long-haired little boy in black clothing and a long brown traveling coat.
"I was totally in control of that," Spud said to the boy.
The boy just bent down and picked up the plastic cup, the one part of his brown hair that wasn't secured in a ponytail, his bangs, falling down into his bronze eyes. He handed the cup back to Spud. "I'm looking for someones."
Jake would have thought the boy's accent was German if it hadn't been for the way he said his final s with a bit of a d in front of it.
"You're looking for someone?" Jake asked.
The boy shook his head and held up two fingers covered in white gloves. "I'm looking for someones. Uh, two someones." He changed his gesture so he was holding up only one finger. "Boy. Same clothes. Yellow hair. Yellow eyes."
Jake hadn't seen what he imagined as a differently colored clone of the brown-haired, brown-eyed boy in front of him. "No. The other one?"
The boy reached into a pocket of his long jacket and pulled out a sketch of an ouroboros. "Man. Green hair. This tattoo."
A red flag went up in Jake's mind. He was supposed to be catching a man with an ouroboros tattoo. "Why are you looking for him?"
The boy blinked, then schooled his features into an apologetic expression. "I understand no."
"Why?" Jake asked again. He stood up straight, taking half a step away from the wiry fence.
The boy's eyebrows raised and the corners of his lips hinted at a smile. "You did...?" He proceeded to struggle through asking Jake if he'd seen the man with the tattoo. He said something about his brother in with his choppy, unclear words too.
"Your brother?"
He nodded. "You did...?"
"I haven't seen him."
The boy's chest fell and he mumbled out a thanks. When he turned to go, Jake thought he saw a familiar shape in black on the back of his brown jacket. Under the boy's hood and his ponytail was a flamel with two wings on either side above it, and Jake was willing to bet that was a crown directly over the cross and snake.
While the Urban Alchemist's flamel had neither the wings or the crown, the dragons were on the look-out for this flamel too, ever since the kitten showed them how the terrorists' symbol was derived.
"That shape…." Jake groaned loudly, sitting down with his glass of water. "Sorry, guys. I've got to keep an eye on that foreigner. Dragon business."
Jake sat there a while, pretending not to watch as the foreign boy went around and asked more people about his comrades. He got up for more water at least once and even went back to the rink for some casual skating as the kid talked to every person who came through the Gate, head drooping more and more as the day went on.
The boy didn't leave until the park was closing at sunset. Jake slipped his red phone out of his pocket and shot Fu a text – he was sure this was more important than patrol and any other leads they didn't have. He clicked the phone shut and followed the foreign boy at a distance in his human form, carrying his skateboard to avoid the rolling sounds of its wheels.
He allowed himself to get a little closer as the air became crisp and the city became darker with the poor lighting in the part of town the kid trudged off to.
Whoever the kid was, it didn't look like he was used to being followed. He just walked ahead, hands shoved deep in his pockets, kicking at pebbles along the sidewalk as he went along. Finally, the kid turned into an alleyway with flickering orange light coming out of it.
Jake could smell the fire – and some garbage. Peeking around a brick wall and into a narrow alley, he saw that the kid had met up with an Asiatic man in a white shirt and blue pants. He sat down next to him, in front of a burning trash can, and accepted a large piece of greenish bread.
"Ear of the dragon." Jake attempted to eavesdrop on the boy and the man, but it did him no good – the man spoke the same not-German language that the boy did.
He frowned. Neither of the two in the alley looked like the ones in the statue that a certain kitten made, but they could be working with the Urban Alchemist as well. And there was always a chance that one of them was their shape-shifter.
Jake looked the man over for a flamel or an ouroboros, but only found a lightly-sewn red circle on a pair of white gloves. If he hadn't been using his dragon eyes, he would have missed it entirely. He didn't know much about alchemy, but he couldn't see any known troublesome symbols on the man. It was his company and his language that pegged him as a possible threat.
The man turned his head and caught Jake with his eyes. A scowl immediately disfigured his handsome features and he lifted one of his gloved hands for something.
"Dragon up!" Before the man could do anything, Jake changed into his full dragon form and rushed into the alley, barely being able to maneuver in the tight space.
The man snapped. Bright light filled the dragon's eyes, and a pillar of flames separated Jake from the two, and when it died down, the man was on his feet and the boy was touching his hands to the ground.
"Flames? What do you think flames are going to do to a dragon?"
The man snapped again. Once again, he temporarily blinded the dragon. But this time when the flames were gone, the man and the boy were gone. Instead, there was a new manhole letting the reek of the sewer out of it – a manhole that was quickly filling in with asphalt again, using some sort of blue light to reform the black, hard ground.
Jake left the alley as it was and looked for the nearest entrance to the sewers, but by the time he'd finally found a manhole, all he caught sight of was the putrid sewer water rushing under the spot he stuck his head in. "Aw, man! Now I've got four magical villains to keep an eye out for, just in time for summer vacation."
"Foreigners?" Lao Shi frowned. He'd been standing in the narrow doorway between his shop and his back rooms, but he stepped forward into the dimly lit, closed electronics shop after his grandson explained where he'd been.
Fu was already standing on fours near the front door. "That doesn't add up. What business would a couple of foreigners have with the Urban Alchemist?"
Jake shrugged and sat down on the smooth gray check-out counter. "The younger one said he's his brother, but he was only about eleven or twelve years old. Had that flamel your kitten showed us on his back though."
Fu stood all the way up on his stubby hind legs and crossed his front paws. "He is not my kitten. As soon as this investigation's over, I'm handing him over to magical CPS."
Lao Shi stroked his chin and walked over to the shop's front window, back to Jake. The young dragon didn't know exactly what his grandfather was looking at out in the layers of buildings that gently faded together and disappeared into the dark, night-time clouds. "Perhaps the boy was the Urban Alchemist's kid brother. Perhaps the boy was not. What concerns me is how a couple of foreigners are connected to our terrorist group. I had hoped this would not escalate to an international affair."
Jake went and stood by his grandfather. It would take them long enough to catch Envy and his co-conspirator if their scope of operation was just the NYC, but now...
Jake groaned to himself. There went the skate-off, and a chunk of his summer vacation too.
His grandfather glanced up at him. "We'll keep our eyes out for these two new faces too, but we'll need you to describe them for us. Come."
Lao Shi and Fu led Jake through the better-lit inventory room, up the straight wooden staircase, and through the kitchen doorway into the older dragon's living room, where, once again, the strange yellow kitten was napping on the loveseat. Fu briefly left the room and returned with a large sketchpad, and within a few hours, they had rough sketches of the foreigners Jake had found that day.
The next day was not a fun day, despite finals being over. Not only did a certain sleep-deprived dragon have to explain to his friends that he may not make it to the end-of-school skate-off, but he didn't get to have his afternoon free either. Currently, Jake was outside an abandoned factory, frowning at the unused smoke stack jutting up into the dark gray sky.
He stood in front of the inside of the tall wall that surrounded the place, glancing around at several rusty storage sheds that sometimes emitted strange animal-like noises like a growl or a hiss. "You're sure this isn't a trap, G? I'd hate to have been rushed over here with just enough time for you to replace the school supplies in my bag with sleuthing supplies if it is."
"Would I have done that if I wasn't sure? I'll check the…."
"I'm just kidding. I've got this. No sweat." Jake pumped his powerful red wings and was off before his grandfather could tell him differently. He left his grandfather behind, calling his name.
He flew around until he found a set of doors, which were locked and secured with a seemingly rusty chain that actually turned out to be strong enough that his dragon strength couldn't break through, but he was finally able to punch his way in through a second-story window near a metal fire escape. He emerged onto a metal walkway with several stations of buttons and levers hanging out above the main floor, hooked up to giant vats and covered machinery.
The walkway itself was covered in a thick layer of dust and bits of broken glass from the window, as were the yellowed dust covers over the factory's machines, but there was a light on downstairs, where Jake, using a dragon's superior vision, could see a cement floor cleared of dust and covered in a large, intricate white circle of chalk instead.
And downstairs, there was also a heavy-looking interior door swinging open into the light.
Jake dropped his backpack on the walkway, where, oddly enough, it landed with a loud "mew!" accompanying its thump.
He hardly heard it as he flapped over the handrail and dove at the creature that came through the door: a man with a bear's hands and face. Jake didn't even have time to spare to identify what sort of magical creature it was as it swept its giant claws at him and knocked Jake to his right, bruising his cheek in the process.
He hit one of the giant vats and was showered with dust from its canvas cover. He sprung back up and rushed his opponent again. This time, he grabbed hold of the creature around its torso, but it sunk its teeth into Jake's shoulder and the dragon let go.
The creature grabbed Jake's tail and spun him around a few times before letting him go, sending him flying into a white brick wall under the walkway.
Jake looked up and saw the creature lumbering toward him, but, after a blue glow, the walkway itself reached down and grabbed it, ensnaring it in spindly metal arms.
It was like what happened to the dead leprechaun. Jake got up and swayed a bit, still dizzy from his recent head-on collision with the wall. "Hello?" he asked, but his only answer was a tiny little mew from somewhere above his head.
Pulling himself together, Jake wobbled out from under the catwalk, suddenly grateful that dragons could usually heal at near-cartoon-like speeds, in case he had to fight off an alchemist.
Up on the catwalk was only Fu's strange little kitten, the one whose yellow eyes were not reflecting light at Jake like a normal cat's would.
The kitten was sitting tensed on the walkway, sparing a few glares at the giant circle off to Jake's right, as it pawed at a set of forgotten lock picks that looked as though they'd come from Lao Shi's.
"What are you doing here? Are those mine?"
"Mew." The kitten pawed the lock picks close enough to himself that he could pick them up with his humanoid hand and drop them onto Jake's scaly face.
"Hey!" Jake picked up the lock-picks and glared up at the kitten, who was now up on all fours and turning toward the stairs. The kitten sprinted down and was soon at Jake's side on the clean floor. "Couldn't you have just brought these to me?"
The kitten stared at Jake with two very uncatlike round pupils. He sat there until Jake sighed and gave up waiting for any form of apology.
"Never mind. Did you see who did that?" Jake pointed beside at the metal contraption him, where the captured bear-creature was growling, its narrowed brown eyes now locked on the kitten.
The kitten arched his back slightly and hissed at it. He trod closer to Jake and put his front paw and hand on his leg.
"Mew!" The kitten got down and plodded over toward where light was spilling from an open door. He stopped and looked back at Jake, but the dragon was already on his way.
Jake pulled the metal door all the way open after the kitten squeezed through and met with a stench. It smelled strongly of animals in there, and by seeing the right wall, away from the door, Jake could see why – the right wall was stacked floor-to-ceiling with different sizes of cages. The occupants barked and meowed and squawked at him. Some hissed and hooted, but the animals were all very agitated or else they didn't move from where they lay immobile and curled up next to untouched bowls of food and water. Paws stuck out from cages, and humanoid hands wrapped around the bars.
The cages were not normal animal carriers: instead of a bar lock that anyone with hands could undo, the cramped cages needed keys to open.
"Someone ought to tell animal control about this." Jake's eyes met the kitten's, and then wandered down to his humanoid hand and foot. "Are you one of them?"
In response, the kitten slunk over to a row of filing cabinets that Jake had previously missed on the opposite wall. The kitten went up to the first of the gray, five-drawer filing cabinets and pointed to the middle drawer: "C."
"Who uses filing cabinets anymore?" Jake asked, an attempt to lighten the mood, but the kitten just blinked before jabbing his pointed finger at the drawer and mewing loudly.
Jake tried the drawer first, and then he used the lock picks on it. The deep drawer held a few thick folders. There was information on various dragon council members, but the thickest folder by far was a folder labeled as "Chimera Army." It was this folder that, leaping up onto the side of the drawer, the kitten grabbed for.
"I haven't seen any chimeras around here," said Jake, but the kitten kept trying to pull it out with his one little hand. He managed to lift it, but its contents spilled everywhere in a loud, rustling avalanche.
Jake bent down to pick the papers up and caught sight of the pictures – none of the creatures in the file were what he knew as chimeras: instead, there were two or more pictures paper-clipped to the same stack of papers – sometimes all with mundane animals, and sometimes with humans, homeless folk by the looks of them. These weren't chimeras – they were fusion creatures – many of them formerly human. "Aw, man! This is what they mean by chimeras?"
Tiny claws dug into Jake's tail and there was a loud mew. The little kitten – no, the little chimera – was clinging to Jake's tail and looking toward a cross-dressed man with spiky green hair and an ouroboros tattoo at the doorway: Envy.
A grin split the shape-shifter's face in two. "Hello again, pipsqueak! And the annoyance from the festival's here too!"
The little chimera let go of Jake's legs and rushed the man, Envy, hissing.
"No, don't!" Jake called, but Envy already had the chimera by his scruff, and he could only hang there growling.
"You're useless like this you know." He shook the chimera around as if conducting his chorus of yowls.
"Hey, let him go!" Jake stepped forward to fight.
Envy shifted his hand into a blade and held it at the chimera's throat. "Why should I?" He smirked. "I'll have an easier time dealing with you than with this little pipsqueak. You should have seen his face the time I..."
The little chimera must have been wriggling in Envy's grip. Jake didn't see how he'd done it, but the chimera was touching the fingers of his human hand to the shape-shifter's transformed arm. There was a glow – the same blue glow as earlier – and the blade fell to the floor in small metal blocks.
"Why, you!" Envy shook the chimera and threw him against the cages. He made the bars on a bird-chimera's cage ring before he fell to the cement floor non-too-gracefully.
Jake rushed Envy, who regrew his missing hand easily and blocked a punch with that arm.
"Mew!" Near the cages, the kitten-chimera got back up and hobbled over to the wall, which he placed his front limbs on and let go, balancing on his hind legs for only just a moment while his front limbs were coming closer together. He fell on his face before they could touch.
Meanwhile, Envy had gotten the upper hand on Jake, having transformed into a talking version of the bear-chimera the young dragon had fought earlier. Currently, Envy had him in a choke hold and was squeezing just a little harder with every taunt. "You're just a glorified human. You never stood a chance against a homonculus like me."
Jake's clawed fingers were on Envy's hands, trying to break the shape-shifter's grip. Every time he managed to pry a finger off, Envy would put it right back on Jake's red scales. "Look at you – you're pathetic."
The kitten-chimera saw what Envy was doing and ran to pounce on his foot.
Envy kicked him, releasing one hand from around Jake's throat. "Watch where you put those claws, you little runt!"
While Envy was yelling at the chimera, Jake grabbed the hand that was still around his throat and pulled the shape-shifter off.
"Get back here!" Envy lunged for Jake again, but the dragon blew flames his way.
Blackened, Envy growled as he was put back to normal by red lightening. Jake sent a larger stream of fire at him and grabbed the little chimera who'd tagged along. "We're getting out of here."
They passed Envy as he was still healing from Jake's last burst of flame and flew out through the broken window. Outside, Jake found his grandfather facing off what looked like several more rooms' worth of chimeras. "G! Envy's here. We can't take him."
"You shouldn't have rushed in there. Jake!"
Jake punched an incoming hawk with two human hands and a mouthful of teeth. "We've got to call this off!"
The dragons retreated, but with the way his grandfather was glaring at him as they walked through the electronic shop's back door in their human forms, Jake didn't think he was going to let it go anytime soon.
"How many times must I tell you to listen to your Dragon Master?"
Jake knew if he didn't do something soon, he'd have to listen to a whole lecture. "I get it. I'm sorry, okay? I should have waited for instructions first! But at..."
Lao Shi pointed to the little yellow chimera in Jake's hands, who was sulking about something and trying to get his braid out of his face. The chimera glared at the older dragon when he pointed at him. "And why did you bring him?"
"I didn't. He stowed away in my bag, okay? He..." Jake trailed off and patted his back with one hand, and the little chimera took the opportunity to hop down and enter the electronics shop on his own. As he walked through the door himself, Jake patted himself with both hands, but the only thing on his back was his plastic jacket.
"You left your bag at the factory, didn't you? Did it have anything important inside?"
"I don't know. You packed it."
"Nothing we can't replace, but I didn't touch your front pocket."
Jake relaxed. "Just a few pencils. Now can we talk about what we did learn at the factory?" He took a seat on the stool to the right of where the chimera was curled up and watching. Fu was already seated with a laptop on the chimera's left.
Lao Shi did give Jake a lecture as he heated up some stir fry for their dinner, but he kept it short so they could discuss what they'd seen at the factory at the kitchen table. Jake didn't have much of an appetite after what he'd learned, but he still picked at the greasy vegetables on his plate, glancing over and seeing that the chimera had less of an appetite than he did for the can of chicken in front of him.
The older dragon had met another guard on his way into the factory after Jake – a giant, talking hawk-based one who let loose an army from the factory's storage sheds. The older dragon was concerned about the army, as well as the complex circle Jake had spotted inside the factory.
"Alchemists use circles to perform their magic," he said. "The more complex the circle, the bigger the ritual."
"Could really complex ones fuse humans and animals?" Jake asked. "Fu's little friend here showed me something disturbing inside."
Lao Shi raised one of his long white eyebrows and looked at the chimera.
"He showed me where they kept their notes on these things," Jake said. "They call them chimeras, but it looked like they've been fusing homeless people with wild and stray animals."
The younger dragon glanced at the scrawny yellow fur ball that occupied the kitchen chair next to him. "You're one of them, right?" His eyes widened. "Or were you a partner they decided to get rid of? I mean, you're an alchemist, aren't you?"
The chimera looked up and blinked.
"Oh, I knew I didn't like you," Fu said. "So one of the Urban Alchemist's cronies decided to invade our home, huh?"
The kitten looked at Fu too and blinked.
Lao Shi slid off his seat and took the bone-thin chimera in his wrinkled hands. "If you are right, there may be a way to question him about this case after all." He sent Fu a look.
"What?"
"I'm sure the human side of him doesn't speak cat. If we could change his vocal cords and mouth structure back, even temporarily..."
Fu landed on twos on the floor. "Oh, that potion. Sure, just give me an hour. Keep this kid here. If he's even a kid."
