And here we go!
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading!
Fact #126: In some cultures, dragons stand for nobility and protection, in others they stand for judgement and destruction, and in others they stand for beauty and grace.
Season: Between 4th and 5th Seasons
Grace didn't consider herself one of those girls who spent exorbitant amounts of time of getting ready to go out, whether it was out to school or the beach or an event. But she did put forth some effort, especially when it was something her mother was taking her to. Unlike the football games Danno would take her to, going to a theater to see a performance from a traveling dance troupe warranted more makeup and nicer clothes.
Step-Stan was absent as usual. Grace thought she saw him even less than Danno and she lived with him. Her mother had hired a babysitter for Charlie for the evening and was waiting for her by the front door when she came down the stairs.
"Come along, darling," she said. "Charlie, be good for Miss Maisie."
"Bye-bye, Mommy!" Charlie crowed from the living room.
"We'll be fine, Misses Edwards. Have fun at the show," the babysitter said.
Grace waved at her brother and followed her mom to the car.
Rachel had donned a black dress with sparkles throughout its length with matching onyx earrings and necklace. Her hair was scooped up into a tidy bun on her head and Grace thought she saw sparkles in her hair, too, but wasn't sure if they were from her dress or from a body spray.
"You look pretty, Mom," she said as she climbed in the passenger seat.
Rachel smiled at her. "So do you, darling. Though, I don't think your father would approve of that dress."
It was a halter top dress with thin straps, the jade green material falling to about her knees. She had matched a black pair of heels and shawl to wear over her shoulders in case it was cold inside the theater. Which it probably would be. It was always cold inside buildings in Hawaii, more so during the summertime when it was hotter and more humid outside.
"I think Danno would like it," she said and shrugged.
She kind of wished Danno was going with them, yet at the same time she was looking forward to having an evening with just her mom with no Step-Stan, Charlie, or anybody else.
Besides, she didn't really think Danno would like this kind of show, anyway.
An hour later left Grace wondering if maybe Danno would have enjoyed this kind of show. Then again, he got to see dragons in his work life, so maybe it wouldn't have been as exciting for him as it was for her and apparently the other people in the audience.
The dances were oriental, unlike the Russian ballets Grace had seen before. The music accompanying the performers was vastly different from the ballets, too, as were the dancers themselves. Men and women going from white robes to colorful ones, seemingly changing colors behind the distraction of fluttering ribbons, was fascinating, but the dragons involved held everyone's attention even more.
Serpents.
At first, she had sank a little lower in her seat and leaned into her mom when they had appeared onstage. The glittering scales and long bodies revived unwanted memories of being up in the jungle with a murderous dragon intent on killing her father and uncle.
These, however, were not violent criminal masterminds, nor were they as large as Wo Fat had been.
They slipped and curled around the stage and the human dancers like living ribbons, almost too agile to be believable. If she hadn't seen it with her own two eyes she might have thought they were CGI dragons.
There were four of them in total.
The shortest one was probably about her cousin Eric's size, but twice as long. Small prong horns the color of ivory sprouted from her head and a set of catfish like whiskers from her snout. Her scales glowed a deep red with black accents on her neck and spine fins, and ivory on her belly scales.
Her partner was a larger Serpent, mostly orange with white and red patches like a koi fish. His horns resembled antlers with many more tines and tinges of color on them. His fins were more flowy and long like the tails of betta fish. The way he moved around his smaller partner reminded Grace of a snake looping over a branch.
The other two were taller than Danno's dragon form, but shorter than Steve's. They were also incredibly long, with tails that went on forever. One was nearly lavender with rings of paler color the length of his body, his fins so short they were nonexistent. The other, however, was black with stripes of white down his back and sides with an impressive rack of antlers, and double fins on his neck that flared out and resembled a cobra's hood.
All of them subtly shifted colors in the precisely placed lights, their scales undulating peculiarly in a way only Serpents were able to do.
Grace glanced at the program in her hands.
The dances told a story. Not like how the Nutcracker suite told a story, but it more portrayed historical events through pure and unadulterated motion with no words. The fluid movement of the troupe, all perfectly in sync with each other, created the illusion of battles won and lost, of times of peace, of their culture, of the influence of western nations that had landed on their shores.
She didn't miss how dragons were highly respected in their culture versus the older European cultures.
The lights on the stage went dark and everyone stood up and clapped.
Belatedly, she realized that two hours had gone by and the show was over.
"That was awesome," she commented to her mom.
"Very," Rachel agreed.
The pair made their way into the lobby with the rest of the crowd. The performers were arranged outside the auditorium doors, bowing and thanking the people for coming. Security guards kept people slowly moving along so as to not create a traffic jam with picture taking. Most people were courteous about it, but some snapped several quick pics on their phones of the Serpent performers, who seemed used to it.
Grace steeled her nerves as they approached the smaller red Serpent.
"You were very beautiful tonight," she said.
The dragoness dipped her head. "Thank you."
"You too," she added to the large black dragon standing next to her. "I mean, you were very handsome tonight."
He bobbed his head gracefully. His two sets of fantastically long whiskers swayed dangerously close to the crowd.
Grace ducked her head and covered the blush in her cheeks, giggling quietly to her mom. "I can't believe I called him beautiful. I meant handsome."
Rachel laughed softly and put her arm around her shoulders. "It's okay, Grace. When I first met your father's siblings, I was so flustered I called your Aunt Bridget a handsome woman and your Uncle Mathew a pretty man."
Grace snorted. "I don't feel so bad, now. Thank you for tonight. It was nice, just the two of us."
"Yes, well, I felt we needed a girls' night out together, just me and you," Rachel said. "Are you hungry? We can go get something to eat."
Grace nodded. "All this Asian culture made me hungry for sushi."
"And a good pot of jasmine tea," Rachel said.
Grace smiled broadly. Sometimes, things turned out okay.
She kept thinking that and didn't pay much attention to the HPD cars that pulled into the parking lot after they had pulled out onto the street, leaving the theater behind them. And the crime scene.
"Hm."
"Don't do it," Hardison said.
Nate looked up from his phone with furrowed brows. They had a quiet moment of downtime while waiting on the Kobayashi couple to arrive on the island, and thus had sequestered themselves away in a comfy rental home tucked into the jungle outside of Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii.
"Don't do what?" he asked.
"You know what. We think we did good and finished a job, and then you make this little all-knowing sound and everything goes to hell," Hardison clarified.
Nate turned his head to Sophie for confirmation. Her silence and feigned confusion over what they were talking about sided her with Hardison. He looked at Eliot sprawled on the couch for support.
The hitter didn't seem eager to take sides, either. Nursing bruised ribs and two knife wounds from their trip in Japan, he was taking full advantage of their brief reprieve to enjoy a beer and rest.
"Look, Takahashi is in Interpol's custody, his company's being reformatted as we speak, and we got the kid. What other thread did we forget to burn?" Hardison asked and leaned back in his chair from his computer workstation, though all he appeared to be working on at the moment were various beers for the brewery back in Portland. Nate wasn't too encouraged by some of the ingredients he spotted on the recipes.
Shaking his head, he glanced back down at his phone. "No, the team did good. I'm just reading this news article–"
"On your cell phone? I thought y'all were more of a physical newspaper kinda guy," Hardison commented.
Nate stared at him. "I came across this news article while keeping tabs on local goings on, and let's say my curiosity was piqued. What was the name of the group Takahashi seemed to have ties to?"
"The dance group? The Flight of the Bumblebees or something?"
"The Dance of Serpents," Sophie corrected, listening more intently than she initially let on.
"Yeah, that. What about 'em?" Hardison asked.
Nate waggled his phone at him. "They're performing in Honolulu tonight."
Hardison held up his hands. "Fine, fine. I'll check it out real quick. I'm just letting you know, I don't dance like that, so if you want to run a con or something on a dance troupe, you better hope Eliot's got twinkle toes."
"Those dancers have more self-discipline and work ethic than you do," Eliot grumbled from the couch.
"Excuse me? I'd like to see them hack into an entire building's security system, a state of the art Japanese one at that, while being shot at," Hardison said as he typed. "Dang people can't appreciate how hard my job is. Let's see you try to get out of a Yakuza filled building by yourself the next time it locks down on you."
"Ouch!"
Nate looked over at the kitchen where Parker was. "Parker, what're you doing?"
"Eating cereal."
He stared, trying to imagine what could have gone wrong. "And how'd you hurt yourself doing that?"
"I didn't do anything! She bit me. She's bitey," Parker said, throwing an accusatory face at the floor.
Eliot sat up on the couch and pointed at her. "You better be glad Serpents aren't venomous until they're teenagers."
Nate eyed him. He often deferred to Eliot's experience when it came to dragons. "You think that's what she is?"
"Some kind of Serpent/Wyvern mix," he said. He tapped his upper lip. "She's got bumps where the retractable fangs will eventually grow in."
"And those scales," Sophie said, looking up from her book and glass of wine, "Serpents have the loveliest scales. The only type to change color."
"And pointy teeth," Parker added. She walked back into the living room with the small crossbreed galloping awkwardly after her, her wing claws skating on the hardwood floor. "What about fire?"
"Wyverns don't typically start breathing fire until their early teens," Eliot said and finished off his beer. He smirked at the dark dragon currently attempting to scale Parker's leg. "Lucky for us."
Nate watched Hayami. For two years old, she was remarkably coordinated and strong. Of course, most toddlers would start chair surfing before a year and be well on their way by a year and a half. Having started life in dragon form, though, put Hayami ahead of the curve by a bit. When not sleeping, she was a handful. Not a holy terror, but curious and into things as any child was.
And she seemed to have a proclivity for nipping ankles and fingers. Eliot had scaled up and refused to pay attention to her bites when she'd started demonstrating that tendency on the flight over from Japan. She wasn't too enthusiastic about being ignored, and yet at the same time seemed to recognize that the much bigger and older dragon didn't appreciate her biting.
They hoped to break the habit. If only the others didn't react to her.
"Ah, hell," Hardison muttered.
"What?" Nate questioned.
"Well, according to my scanners, HPD just got called out to the theater where the troupe is performing," he said.
"Why?"
Hardison looked up. "Possible homicide."
The team all looked at him as if he had jinxed it. Nate sighed. The job was never truly done.
Next week on "Dragons", Five-0 investigates a homicide at a theater and becomes entangled in a web.
Do any of you guys watch/enjoy "Leverage"?
So, interesting news about the show last Friday, huh? Not to sound cold, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been expecting each season to be its last. And this year, S10, I just had this gut deep feeling it would be the last one.
At least we'll have fics, right?
Thank you for reading, reviewing, faving, and following!
