I may have let slip to some of you that this chapter was going to be an AU, but that fell through. I hope you'll enjoy this one, though.
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading!
Fact #124: Nature produces things artists only wish they could.
Season: Between 4th and 5th Seasons
For all the money Step-Stan had to throw around, for all the clubs her mom was a part of, Grace couldn't believe she was so bored. She'd been sprawled on her bed most of the morning texting her friends and browsing the internet. Her mom wasn't doing anything today because Charlie was fussy, Danno was at work which meant the rest of her extended ohana were there with him, Step-Stan was busy. Even her friend Lana was on the Big Island with her parents.
So she sat scrolling with one hand and flexing her other arm, bringing the scales into and out of existence again and again.
She'd seen Danno shift his scales out quickly and precisely, as did Uncle Steve. Ever since her scare a year or two ago when her scales had become shifted and stuck of their own accord, she'd been working on mastering control over them.
The arms were the easiest. Auburn scales flecked and swirled with gold glimmered every time they appeared. First just the back of her hand, then her whole hand, then just her forearm, then her hand and forearm, until she had a full sleeve of scales from fingertip to shoulder. Like a tattoo. Which was one of the only things her dad and mom agreed on. She could only get one when she was thirty. Or forty. Or never.
She'd have to work on Uncle Steve and try to get him to soften Danno up. He had neat tattoos.
For now, she settled for her natural decorations.
Not nearly as thick as her dad's nor as angular, they were softer and thinner and shinier. Danno said it came from her grandma's side of the family, from the Serpent genes running in Nana Clara and Aunt Bridget. The colors, however, were all Danno.
She examined the gold accents trailing throughout the auburn. Some scales were edged with it, others had freckles of it, and a few were solid auburn.
Grace furrowed her brows and sat up, turning her arm further.
"Woah," she whispered.
One of the swirls of gold created a heart on the inside of her upper arm. A perfect heart, plain as day.
Maybe she didn't need a tattoo.
Steve stepped back from the door, braced himself, and kicked it. Pain radiated up his shin. Gritting his teeth, he tried again. The wood splintered this time and the door banged open.
"Really? Two tries?" Danny asked.
"It's not a flimsy trailer door, Danny," he grumbled.
They swept through the dressing room. There had obviously been a struggle. One of the racks of clothes lay on the floor and the stool in front of the vanity had been kicked several feet away.
"You know, I never used to think fashion models had exciting lives," Danny commented while rifling through the still upright rack of one-of-a-kind clothing. "Just thought it was photoshoots and parties all the time. But after the Victoria Secret fiasco last year, the exploding trailer before that, and now this one, I'm putting model on my list of dangerous professions."
"I don't think it's like this all the time for them," Steve said quietly.
He frowned at a long black curtain slowly wavering of its own accord. Shooting a glance around the room confirmed the other curtains weren't moving like this one. He caught his partner's attention and nodded at the curtain.
Danny returned the nod, ready to cover him if need be.
Steve pulled back the curtain to reveal a hidden door.
Danny huffed out a very audible breath. "Well, I don't see anything here."
"Better go clear the rest of the rooms," Steve added, catching his drift.
They waited completely silent and stock still for ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty.
And then they heard the muffled sob and the aggravated hissing.
Steve gently grasped the handle on the door. He mouthed his countdown.
One. Two. Three…
He ripped open the door.
Danny pivoted slightly, gun trained on their assailant. Steve took a lower position.
"Stay back! I'll kill her!"
Steve had no doubt the crazed man would do it. None of his earlier threats had seemed idle and he was frazzled now. He could see the wild look in his eye. A cornered animal. He knew he'd been caught with no way out.
"Hey, hey, it's okay, just calm down," Danny said. Always the first to try to talk down a suspect. "No one has to get hurt here, understand?"
"No, no! It is you who needs to understand. How can you allow such a beautiful creature into the eye of the public? Do you know what men would do to her in my country if they saw her like this? So naked and exposed?" the man said.
"They would do what you're doing right now?"
Danny kept his voice even and reasonable, but Steve detected an irritated undercurrent.
The man gaped, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. "No! I am saving her! Can you not see that?"
"I'm having a hard time seeing the positive side of your argument when you're holding a knife to Miss Karima's throat," Danny said. "Why don't you put the knife down and come out, huh? We'll make sure she doesn't get hurt by anyone, okay?"
The man started shaking his head. "No, no, no, no, no. The public already knows who she is. She'll never be safe. She's too beautiful, too unusual. She'll never – I have to – Karima forgive me–"
Steve got a shot off before he could drag the knife across her jugular.
Karima yelped and pulled herself free from the not quite dead man. Danny guided her off to the side and Steve darted into the hidden room. He kicked the knife away and called EMS while patting the man down in search of anymore weapons. The likelihood of him being able to use a weapon was slim, but he didn't want to take that chance.
Satisfied, he stepped out of the room and caught his partner on the receiving end of an awkward hug.
Karima was a tall and lean woman, that fact only being more pronounced in her dragon form. Her long forelegs were draped over Danny's shoulders, her slender head pressed against his back, and Danny overall looked like a teddy bear being squished in a child's arms.
"Okay, babe, it's okay. You're okay," he soothed, slowly detangling himself from her.
Karima let him go. She whispered, "I thought he was going to kill me."
"Hey, look at me." Danny took her chin in his hand. Her pale brown eyes watered. "You're safe now. He's not going to bother you anymore, okay?"
"I don't understand why it's so bad," she murmured.
"Why what's so bad?" Danny asked.
She eyed the paramedics as they entered, bypassing them and heading for the man.
"Why it's so bad that I look this way," she finished with a choked sob.
Steve ground his teeth. He walked over to them and set his hand softly on her shoulder.
"There's nothing wrong with you," he said firmly.
"When I was a child, I was not pretty. I was made fun of at school, by my siblings, by adults who should know better," she said. "And then I grew up, and my scales turned colors, and I got taller, and I gained confidence in myself, and people still hate me."
"The world's broken, Karima," Steve said.
She watched as her harasser was hauled out on a gurney. "I know it is. And I can handle the verbal taunts. But this?"
Despite being an impressive Arboreal/Amphibian, her delicate stature had let her down. Not all dragons were able to defend themselves like some could. They weren't endowed with that particular skillset. Nature had given them something else.
In Karima's case, she was more like an orchid than a dandelion. Scales of champagne and rose gold, shimmering white scales under her eyes, thins tufts of fins sprouting from her haunches and lower back, she was truly a marvel of dragon genetics.
And some of the world hated her for it. There would always be people who would despise something they couldn't create, something they couldn't understand, something they couldn't have.
There would always be people who didn't realize that nature would always win.
Somewhere in Japan….
Ledgers and records and rosters and reports lay scattered across the table. Some were the only physical copies available, others were printouts from digital sources. Carving out pathways for new business opportunities was no small task. Neither was cutting heads off a monster.
Her fingers danced along the rim of the crystal tumbler, the various angles reflecting the glowing light form the fireplace in dazzling patterns, the whiskey itself going from a subtle amber color to a fiery one.
The whiskey sloshed as she jumped.
Joey sprang up from his seat at the other side of the desk at the bodily thump.
The doors to her office swung open.
"Well." She leaned back in her chair, genuinely surprised. Not many people could get the drop on her. "I did not expect to see you, Eliot Spencer."
Eliot shook out his hand as he walked into the room, tightly strung and tense as ever. A predator ready to pounce. Joey mirrored his body language.
"Put it down, Joey," Eliot said.
Joey grinned and shook his head. "I've got Dragon Slayer Rounds, and if I remember correctly, you've still got fifty feet to go before my gun becomes useless."
She held up a hand. "Eliot doesn't wish me dead. And neither does his boss, I imagine."
Joey reluctantly holstered his weapon, but remained standing.
"What're you doing in Japan, Shamrock?" Eliot questioned. He stayed a safe distance on the other side of the room, a show of good faith. He was only dangerous in close quarters.
She drained her whiskey and set it down. "What are you doing in Japan? Last I checked, your team was based in Portland, Oregon."
"Unfortunately, evil knows no bounds."
The man that entered the room did so with a casual air. Dressed in black, having no weapons on him, his deep blue eyes sharp with intelligence, there was something about him that said he was the one to be afraid of. Eliot may have been the hitter, but this man could bring to ruin an empire in a day.
"Nathan," Shamrock greeted coolly, and a bit curiously. She tapped the tumbler. "Drink?"
"No," he said. "You have something else I want."
A few of the documents on the table before her and the events of the last weeks started to fall into place. The dreaded feeling of uncertainty was replaced with reassurance.
"I take it that Mr. Takahashi didn't suddenly fall on hard times without some assistance," she said.
Nate shrugged. "You hurt enough people, leave enough bodies in your wake, it eventually catches up to bite you in the ass."
"And he indeed got bitten," she said. "Tell me, White Knight, you've rarely if ever turned to me for help, so what do you need?"
"Takahashi wasn't only a corrupt businessman, he was a patron of another organization," Nate said, walking closer until he was pulling out a chair and sitting across the table from her.
Eliot wasn't far behind him.
She lifted a brow. "The Yakuza?"
Nate gave her a look that warned her not to toy with him. "Yes, but that's not what I was talking about. Does the name Marilyn Walker ring a bell?"
That's exactly what she had expected. "It sounds familiar. As a businesswoman I've met a lot of people over the years, and I've come across a lot of shady organizations."
"Hmm." Nate flashed a humorless smirk. "See, I've heard that you've been rather involved in that particular organization. Or, rather, the dismantling of it."
"And I'm sure you've heard tales of monster slayers, too," she said.
"Damn it, Shamrock," Eliot interrupted. "Do you have the kid or not?"
Nate frowned at his forwardness, but Shamrock merely smiled. He'd obviously grown tired of his boss' roundabout method of extracting information. While she appreciated a good mind game session, she appreciated bluntness as well.
"Yes, there's a chance I know where Takahashi's prized possession is," she answered.
"We want the kid," Nate said.
"Convince me," she said.
Nate pulled his phone out and showed her a picture. "This is Mr. and Mrs. Kobayashi. Mr. Kobayashi's sister was a victim of Walker's breeding operation. Sadly, she wasn't recovered from the ships or any of the warehouses."
"How do you know Takahashi was in possession of Kobayashi's niece or nephew? A lot of children were produced in that operation, a lot of them are still in the wind," she said. She should know. Tracking them even with the information from the black book was proving to be an incredibly difficult and time consuming task.
"Because, unlike most of the others, the father wasn't a captive," Nate said.
Shamrock hid her surprise and concern well. Though, with that fact in the open, she had a feeling she knew the general gene pool the kid had come from.
"You'd be surprised what a pissed off hacker can do when someone begs him to find their niece or nephew," Nate explained.
She looked between him and Eliot. "Taking down Takahashi wasn't so much a righteous mission as it was a retrieval mission."
"We plan to get the kid to Hawaii and placed with their aunt and uncle, and then help them disappear," Nate said. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. "We combed every inch of Takahashi's house and boat. We monitored surveillance footage of his Yakuza partners. The kid just vanished."
Shamrock blew out a breath and shuffled the papers into stacks. "I'm rather disappointed. I did all this work to have Takahashi removed from the picture and you pulled the rug out from under him before I did."
Nate narrowed his eyes at her. "You were targeting him."
"This is actually advantageous to me," she said. "With you offering to take her home, I'm free to remain in Japan and finish my business."
With that, she picked up the young creature in her lap and set her on the table.
"Are you kidding me?" Eliot grunted as he took her into his arms. "You had her here the whole time?"
"Do you know a safer place for her?" Shamrock asked.
He grunted again.
The nearly two year old dragon yawned and stretched, then tucked her head into the crook of Eliot's arm. Her scales, though not fully developed in both density and colors, were mesmerizing. Ribbons of green and yellow glimmered against an ebony base, freckles of color splattered amongst the wider swaths of auroras on her wings, and all together they looked like the Northern Lights had been thrown down onto her.
"Her name is Hayami," she said.
Nate stood up from the table and took her off of Eliot. They headed towards the door where Achutebe stood glaring at Eliot, dabbing blood away from his nose as he did.
"Take care of her, Nathan," she said.
"We will."
"You may not have a problem with me now," she continued. She slowly stood up and braced her hands on the table. "But if something happens to her in your care, you will have a problem with me."
Nate turned and raised his brows at her. "Noted."
She sat back down. "And give Detective Williams my regards, but not my address."
"We don't plan on crossing paths with them again," Nate said, and then they were gone.
Shamrock shook her head as she returned to working on the ledger. "You will."
Next week on "Dragons", Jerry makes a reappearance to lend a hand with a case.
Artwork is also up on the art page. Not of the beastball players like I had planned, but there is art.
Thank you guys for reading, reviewing, faving, and following!
