Chapter 130: How Not To Train Your Dragon
"Zena,"
The little white dragon was munching happily on cotton candy, which was being hand-fed to her by Brother Kynnie. They were sitting next to Daddy, who had his tail curled around them both, and nice lady daprimcess was sitting nearby.
"Zena, wake up,"
Daddy and Funny Little Pumpkin Man were talking about adult stuff. One of them laughed; she didn't care which.
"Zena, they're making pork sausages for breakfast. Your favourite,"
The cotton candy spontaneously transformed into pork sausages, which were even yummier.
There was a bang, and Brother Kynnie turned and randomly shot Stabby Bad Friend Ryos, who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly.
"Right, you've heard so many gunshots I guess they wouldn't wake you up," Brother Kynnie sounded exasperated. Zena wasn't sure why. Sausages were yummy and Stabby Bad Friend Ryos wasn't here anymore, he was dead.
Suddenly, the world moved, and Brother Kynnie grunted. "You are heavy," he groaned, and everything seemed a bit dizzy.
Finally, Zena opened her eyes, finding herself in the room at the top of one of the towers that Daprimcess Hisui had designated for her. Brother Kynnie was lifting her out of the pile of partly shredded cushions that was serving as her bed. Zena hoped Daprimcess Hisui wouldn't be mad about the cushions being damaged. She had a lot of sharp spines and claws, accidentally cutting them up was inevitable.
"Oh good, you're awake," Brother Kynnie snorted, before unceremoniously dropping her. "That means you can walk. Get up, it's breakfast time,"
Breakfast!
-[CoT]-
Zeta perched on a massive stool with a very thick cushion and happily bit into a sausage. Scowling Smells Funny Lady had suggested she eat on the floor like a dog, but Brother Kynnie had told her that if Zena were to eat out of a dog bowl, Demuri would eat her meals through a straw.
Silly Kynnie, straws are for drinks!
"And how's this gorgeous little girl doing?" Funny Little Pumpkin Man asked, finding the sweet spot between her horns and scratching, sending the dragonet into gurgles of pleasure.
"She's getting fat," Brother Kynnie dryly observed.
"Don't be grumpy," One-Armed Clever Lucy commanded. "After everything we've been through, we all deserve to get fat and lazy for a bit,"
"Speak for yourself," Brother Kynnie promptly proved himself a hypocrite by swallowing a rasher of bacon whole. "I've never been fat or lazy in my whole life. I'm not starting just because we're royal houseguests now,"
Daprimcess Hisui raised her eyebrows at Brother Kynnie, looking exasperated. "I'm sure I've seen you gain a pound or two recently,"
"Oh, shut up," Zena's brother growled. Daprimcess chuckled, and Kynnie cast a glare at her. "What's so funny?"
"I don't think anyone has ever told me to shut up before. They're all too afraid that I'll have them executed," Hisui shrugged. "It's nice to have someone around who doesn't respect titles,"
"Nonetheless, a certain amount of decorum is expected," Daprimcess' Little Daddy sternly reminded the table. "At least, when we're in public,"
Zena mulled this over. "Funny Pumpkin Man? What's decorum?" she suddenly piped up.
There was a moment of silence, and then everyone laughed. "I'll explain it to you when you're older," Pumpkin Man finally assured the dragonet.
There was a clatter, and one of the doors was swung open by a servant in an immaculate uniform, who admired two more man servants who carried a large platter of food before them, followed by Scowly Lady Akari Demuri, carrying herself with imperious authority. Her face was covered in enough makeup to open a beauty parlour. "My apologies for my tardiness, I was for some reason informed that we would be eating breakfast on the balcony," Ugly Makeup Lady glared at Daprimcess for some reason when she said this, to which Hisui replied with an innocent smile.
"Kynnie?" Zena scrambled over to Brother Kynnie, both to ask him a question and get away from Lady With Weird Smelling Makeup as she took the only available seat at the table, opposite Pumpkin Daddy and next to both Golden Hair Stardust-Smelling Lucy and Zena herself.
"What is it?" Kynigós asked, spearing a sausage on his fork.
"Why is Smelly Ugly Lady eating with us?"
Demuri chocked on a morsel, and glared at Zena. "Excuse me?! How dare you -"
"I'm quite sure that no insult was intended and that it would be the height of absurdity to take offence at a child," Pumpkin Daddy interrupted. Demuri obligingly nodded, instead mumbling unkind phrases about torturing lizards. Zena resolved to find out what a lizard was and what they had done to offend Smelly Lady. It sounded like she wanted to hurt them a lot.
"Lady Demuri is the King's suitor," Brother Kynnie explained. Noticing Zena's confusion at the unfamiliar word, he added; "Potential mate,"
"Like you and Daprimcess?" the Energy dragon innocently asked. Kynnie and Daprimcess choked, Stardust Woman Lucy and Pumpkin King chuckled, and Smelly Demuri snorted; "I should hope not!"
"Um, no, not really. Demuri has a lot of noble families - important people - supporting her who want her to become Queen with King Toma," Kynnie explained.
"But Pumpking doesn't want Stinky Lady to be Queen?" Zena looked pleased as she spoke. She had noticed that 'pumpkin' and 'king' sounded very similar, so she combined the two words and now one word meant two things! Now how could she make it also mean 'daddy'?
Naturally, she was oblivious to the death glare that Demuri was casting at her.
"I wouldn't say . ." Toma trailed off as Kynigós nodded confirmation. "But these important people won't take no for an answer. And Demuri really wants to be Queen,"
"Why?" the pearl-coloured dragon asked. "What's so good about being Queen?"
"Hisui, do you want to field this one?" Kynigós suggested. For his part, at first, he had been hesitant about using the princess' given name. However, Hisui had made it clear that she would not stand for Kynigós, of all people, referring to her as a princess and that for the sake of slighting Demuri at every opportunity, Kynigós officially had free use of her name, particularly when the old hag was in earshot.
"If I ever find out, you'll be the first to know," Daprimcess assured Zena, who nodded, content with the answer. It was alright not to know something if older people didn't know it either. She'd come up with that conclusion all by herself.
What was a conclusion again? The word was in her parent-memories and she knew it, but it felt all fuzzy around the edges.
Breakfast wrapped up without event, and Smelly Makeup Lady stalked off. Zena watched her go.
"Hey Zena?" Daprimcess spoke, and Zena fixed her attention on her. "Want to go play in the gardens?"
"You don't have any royal duties to attend to?" Kynnie checked.
"Not this morning. I do have a fitting for a dress for next week's banquet after lunch, but we have some time to spare," Future Big Sis Hisui assured him, and Kynnie nodded and smiled.
Zena nodded solemnly to herself. Hisui and Kynnie would be mated sooner or later. Though . . she screwed up her face thoughtfully. Smelly Lady wanted to be Pumpking's mate, but she obviously wasn't Daprimcess' mother. Zena had never seen Daprimcess' mother, so she was probably dead.
Zena's mummy had died before she hatched, she knew that. And Daddy had died two months ago. And Cool Sis Assie's mum died too, though not until twelve years after Assie was born. But Assie's daddy had been dead for a long time. Did that mean . . anyone who mated and had babies was going to die?
"Zena? Are you coming?" Brother Kynnie asked.
Pushing away the thought of Brother Kynnie dying, Zena nodded, loping after Daprimcess, Kynnie and Star Smelling Lucy. Time to play!
-[CoT]-
As Zena frolicked in the gardens, Kynigós sat with Hisui in a gazebo. "So, I killed another assassin a couple of days ago," the hunter made conversation.
"Did you? That's your third, right?" Hisui nodded.
"Yep. Jeez, am I really that famous now?" Kynigós dryly chuckled.
"Don't be so surprised. You're quite remarkable. It makes sense that they'd be afraid of you," Hisui replied.
"Still," Kynigós snorted. "And to think this is supposed to be my retirement,"
"Well, I imagine it's not worse than the apocalypse," the princess offered.
"Yeah," the hunter admitted.
"Tell me more," Hisui suggested. "I know it's never going to happen now, but . . there was a world where my kingdom was in ruins. I need to know how to prevent that,"
"Can you prevent a dragon from negating gravity in a whole city?" Kynigós asked.
". . Is that some kind of metaphor?"
"No. That is literally what you'd have to do,"
"I couldn't, maybe. But she could," Hisui pointed out, gesturing at Zena. Only the pearl-coloured dragonet was nowhere to be seen. "Eh? Where's Zena?"
"Zena?" Kynigós called. There was no response.
"Zena, sweetie, where are you?" Hisui tried, to no avail.
Kynigós flung himself from the bench, dropping to all fours and taking full advantage of his dragon-enhanced sense of smell. Zena's scent was obvious, and he traced it around a couple of hedges until he picked up a new scent and growled.
Hisui followed, looking nervous. "What is it?"
"How much do you trust Kama? Do you know where his loyalties lie?" the hunter asked as he continued to follow the trail.
"The leader of the Hungry Wolf Knights? He's never been disloyal, though I can't say I like him much," Hisui admitted. "But the Hungry Wolf Knights have never been involved much in castle affairs. They're executioners, they only get involved at the direct order of someone who's sanctioned to . . oh,"
There was a massive hole in the ground of the gardens, looking warped and bubbled as though it had been eaten through with acid. The cave formed an angle leading down into the bowels of the earth, no doubt into the caves that were the domain of the Executioners. Sniffing, Kynigós could tell that Zena, and two men, had gone through the hole.
"This looks like Neppa's work," Hisui observed. "He's a member of the Hungry Wolf Knights who uses Acid magic,"
"Tell me everything you know about all their members," Kynigós demanded.
"Right. There's also Uosuke, a fisherman who uses magic that changes the terrain to his advantage, Kamika, an assassin who uses Paper Magic with a variety of effects depending on the colour of paper, a Plant Magic user named Cosmos, and you know Kama, who has Nullification Magic,"
Kynigós stifled a chuckle. "That's his thing? Nullification Magic? I've killed bigger creatures without a single drop of magic,"
Hisui started. "Wha - you can't kill them! They're the Garou Knights, our castle's strongest defence! They're part of the royal . ." She trailed off as Kynigós fixed her with a deadly glare.
The blond man looked furious. "At least two of them have kidnapped Zena. That means they've probably turned traitor against the Kingdom of Fiore. Kama's the one in charge, and he knows he's no match for me. I have to assume that he has enough support down there that he thinks he can kill me in a fight, because he knows I'll be coming. The most likely scenario is that a rival nation has paid them off to capture Zena and deliver her to our enemies. It's possible that whoever our enemies are sent their own agents along, but more likely all of the Knights are in on this. Kama literally makes a living out of five-to-one fights like this. Therefore it's highly likely that the Hungry Wolf Knights are all waiting in an ambush at the bottom of this tunnel,"
Hisui considered this. "I agree," she nodded. "The Knights have been acting out a lot lately. Their recent actions make sense if they've been preparing to betray Fiore,"
"They're not going to be doing anything ever again when I'm through with them," Kynigós declared, starting into the tunnel.
"Wait - you just said it was an ambush, isn't just walking into it a really bad idea?" Hisui protested.
The Earth Dragon Slayer scoffed. "There's a flaw in their strategy. They're used to using those caves, they think it's their territory. But I'm an Earth Dragon Slayer. Underground, I'm in charge,"
"Well, you're not going alone," the princess declared, pulling something from her pocket.
Kynigós looked at her awkwardly. "No offence, Hisui, but you're not exactly . ."
"A fighter? Perhaps not. But if there's one thing a ruler needs to know how to do, it's delegate," A key made of ocean-blue crystal flashed in Hisui's hand as she inserted it into the air and twisted. "Open, Gate of the Bottomless Well!" she invoked. "Neptune!"
A doorbell rang out, and a huge man appeared. He was deeply tanned, almost bronze, with white hair and mutton chops framing his face. A pair of stylish sunglasses covered his eyes, and a red Hawaiian shirt was draped over his shoulders, unbuttoned and leaving his chest exposed. His feet were clad in flip-flops, and baggy swimming trunks were taut around his muscled thighs. Under his arm he carried a long, blue surfboard with a black trident painted onto it. "So, what are we shredding today, Princess?"
Kynigós cocked an eyebrow. "Who's this guy?" He knew about Celestial Magic, he'd helped Hisui and Future Lucy train using some of her Silver Keys - after the debacle with the Eclipse Gate she'd committed to learning combat magic. Kynigós was unable to pass on Dragon Slayer Magic, but Future Lucy had been happy to become her tutor in Celestial Magic. All this aside, never before had Kynigós seen the Celestial Deity of Water.
"For the last couple of months, I've had agents scouring auction houses and markets all over the world, looking for powerful Celestial Keys. One of them finally came through," Hisui looked smug. "This is Neptune, one of the Celestial Deity Spirits. The Deities are a subsection of Celestial Spirits who are extremely powerful and further distinguished from others of their ilk by virtue of being able to use one extremely powerful final attack,"
"Great. Let's go. And try to keep up," Kynigós instructed Neptune, jogging down the tunnel.
"Not so fast. Neptune, at the end of this tunnel, a group of wizards will be waiting to ambush you and Kynigós. As soon as you see them, use Mystic Well and try not to damage the caves too much,"
Neptune grinned and shot her finger-guns. "You got it,"
Kynigós rolled his eyes and paced off, the Spirit hot on his heels.
It took a few minutes, but they reached the end of the tunnel. Kynigós held up a hand. "This is the perfect spot for an ambush," he whispered. Neptune nodded his assent.
"Hey! You shitty fake knights! Quit hiding behind a hostage, and come out and face me!" Kynigós roared, raising his rifle and ready to fire at a moment's notice.
There was a moment of silence.
"You reject your penance?" Kama's voice echoed through the tunnel. "You have sinned, and the bill comes due. It's not so easy to dismiss when you're not the one paying the price, are you?"
Exactly half a second passed as Kynigós processed the implications of this statement.
Then he exploded into the cave, a wide-burst Earth Dragon's Roar on low power blowing dust and dirt into the air and blocking everyone's vision. But with dragon senses and hunter's intuition, Kynigós didn't need eyes to see.
"Terrain Effect!" someone shouted. The hunter shot into overdrive as he realised the speaker was far enough away that he couldn't directly hit him, so his gun swivelled and he fired a shot in that direction. A fragrant scent caught his nostrils, some kind of plant, probably Cosmos' work, and he Roared again, shards of rock obliterating the offending plants before they could strike.
A massive, meaty fist caught his arm, quickly finding the strap of his hunter's pack, and someone cackled, "Say goodbye to your bag of tricks,"
Kynigós wheeled, instantly located the source of the noise - the assailant's mouth - and delivered a devastating uppercut with a roar of "Earth Dragon's Titanic Fist!" As the dust cleared, Neppa was thrown straight off his feet, releasing Kynigós' pack.
Wind blew on his face, accompanied by a fluttering noise like paper, and suddenly purple scraps plastered themselves to every inch of exposed flesh. "Paralysis Paper," Kamika sadistically whispered.
The dust finally cleared, revealing Kama and Kamika standing together. Kama had one of his scythes gripped tightly in his hand, and was clutching Zena to his chest. The blade was at her throat. "Kynnie!" Zena squeaked.
Kynigós struggled, but his body refused to move. "Neptune?" he pragmatically called. It would have been satisfying to take or the entire group single-handedly, but he wasn't going to turn down the help. Especially since he doubted the other three Garou Knights were actually down, probably only dazed. If this took too long they'd recover.
"No dice, home slice, I'm stuck too," Neptune spoke from behind him, and Kynigós rolled his eyes, unable to see the surfer Deity but certain that he was covered in the same purple confetti as him.
"You think you're so special," Kama's eyes were alight with malice. "That you can come into our castle, sweep our princess off her feet and take over our kingdom? Such shameless unrepentance will not go unpunished!"
"That ain't a word, cool cat," Neptune pointed out.
"Ash-hole," Zena solemnly agreed.
"Silence!" Kama roared. "For playing with the princess' heart and convincing her that you are some manner of saviour, and conspiring to take over the kingdom -"
"I didn't do anything like that, shut the hell up!" Kynigós roared.
"Silence!" Kama repeated.
"Just kill the dragon. They can't stop you," Kamika suggested.
Kynigós' eyes went wide. "Zena, now!" he commanded, opening his mouth wide.
There was a common misconception that Neptune was the god of the ocean. Originally, however, he was not; he was the god of springs, wells and lakes. It was only later on that his legend was co-opted into being the god of the ocean, for what was the ocean but a very large, salty lake? Nonetheless, the true root of Neptune's power was never in the sea, but in the groundwater from which lakes and springs originate. Hence the nature of his true might; Mystic Well was -
"Okay, I get you have an internal monologue going, but we're kinda done here," Neptune's eyes bulged open as he realised that he'd missed his chance.
While he was hosting his own internal soliloquy, the Energy Dragon had blasted a roar of pure magical plasma into Kynigós' mouth. His skin turned hard as stone and green cracks spiderwebbed across it, and wherever the green power touched Kamika's Paralysis Paper, the spell flaked away. And then Kynigós lunged, striking Kamika like a bullet and sending her flying into the middle distance with an "Earth Energy Dragon's Roar!" and a wave of crystalline green rocks.
Kama was too slow. He couldn't have moved his scythe to cut Zena's throat before the weapon had been snapped in half and he was being struck all over by an unrelenting assault of green and brown magic. After only a few seconds, his grip slackened and Zena leapt free, enabling Kynigós to punch Kama so hard that the ground ruptured underneath his bloodied body and drove him into a small crater.
"Earth Energy Dragon's Shining Barrage, asshole," Kynigós spat green-tinged phlegm at the Knight.
"Nuh-uh!" Zena protested. "Tha' last punch wuz diffwent!" she corrected her brother. "Eawth Enegy Dwagon's, uhhhhh, Big Hit,"
"We'll workshop the name later," Kynigós assured her.
"Total wipeout, dude, I didn't do nada," Neptune mumbled, depressed, as Hisui emerged into the cave and took in the scene.
"I can't believe you took out all five of the Garou Knights at once," she observed.
"Just tell me it means that they're all fired," Kynigós noticed that Cosmos was starting to recover, and Neppa wasn't far behind her. "I hope you two don't plan on fighting me," he growled, his nostrils flaring.
"Stand down, Garou Knights. There will be a full investigation into this affair, and if you're really foolish enough to assault the Royal Princess and her advisor, then I doubt you'll ever see the sun again when it's over," Hisui growled.
"But Demuri said it'd all be peachy," Uosuke pointed out, his gormless expression plastered across his bald head.
"Shut up!" Kamika shouted from the far end of the cave, and Uosuke blanched, nodding and miming zipping his lips.
"Lady Demuri put you up to this?" Hisui frowned.
"Alright, I know who I'm going to beat up next," the hunter growled, stalking back towards the cave, but the princess caught his arm. "Don't. She's a political savant, she'll have covered her tracks three times over. If you attack her, she'll find a way to spin the situation so that it ends with you in jail and her getting off scot-free. Trust me, there's a better way to handle this,"
Kynigós looked into the eyes of the person who had somehow become the one human he trusted most in the world, and sighed. "I hate politics,"
"The feeling's mutual," Hisui assured him.
"So, we taking these dawgs to the lockup or what?" Neptune asked.
-[CoT]-
It's time for Doctor Kit's Documentaries on Phoenix's Eye!
"Finally, it's been way too long," Doctor Kit groused. "This segment really should have been added to the previous chapter, but the author only thought of doing this after Chapter 129 went up,"
"Today, we're discussing Asakura! Everyone's least favourite alien robot psychopath. The author felt that a little more light needed to be shed on her nature and motivations,"
"The thing about Asakura is, there's a glitch in her internal processes. TFEI are designed to replicate humans to the best of their ability, but they aren't always that good at it. As we meet more TFEI in the story, this'll become more apparent. That said, we already have one example; Yuki Nagato," Kit brought up a picture of Ariel's schoolgirl cousin. "Yuki suffers from a disconnection in her brain that prevents her from properly generating emotional responses. This isn't a big deal to anyone, really, because the symptoms are fairly similar to a severe case of autism. Anyone who spends a lot of time with Yuki will chalk her eccentricities up to her being antisocial and autistic, which, well, she basically is,"
"Asakura has a similar but separate issue. The sentient being's brain has six key responses; joy, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and surprise. Asakura, though, only has one; joy. Or rather, the other five just don't register. She is incapable of reacting to anything in any way other than pleasure or happiness, but more than that, because she's never felt sadness or anger or fear, she isn't able to understand how other people feel when experiencing these emotions. She has absolutely no empathy. That's not to say that she's unaware of their existence, though, more that she regards emotions as tools, to be used to manipulate people when necessary and disregarded when there's no reason to consider them,"
"Case in point; her interactions with Pierce during Chapter 114. At first, Asakura didn't understand that the other members of Phoenix's Eye would be upset by Pierce's death. But once Pierce explained that to her, she realised that the grief Phoenix's Eye would feel over Pierce's death, if properly directed, would drive his friends to become stronger and destroy the Canopy, thus playing directly into Cardinal's hands. She doesn't care how much it would hurt the other Phoenixes, because inflicting pain on others is just a means to manipulate them into achieving her ends. And she doesn't even understand why this is so bad, because she's unable to feel anything but happiness and pleasure,"
"I should note; none of this is supposed to redeem Asakura in any way, shape or form. She's a terrible person through and through. This is just a thought experiment that the author finds more interesting than just saying 'she's a psychopath end of story.' Also, Asakura is the only blue TFEI under Cardinal who thinks this way; Cardinal and his people as a rule aren't afraid to do morally dubious things, but there are lines that they refuse to cross. Asakura does not speak on behalf of the whole group,"
A/N
A/N
Okay, so this chapter was originally going to be told totally from Zena's perspective. I thought it would be fun. But damnit it is very hard to write from her point of view! That's part of why this chapter was delayed so much, honestly. Plus, that would have meant that Zena had to be present for every part of this chapter. Granted, there was only one point where she wasn't, but I enjoyed writing Kynigós' assault more anyway, since Zena wouldn't have been able to see most of it.
Also, Neptune! Finally! I've been kicking that idea around for years! . . Gotta be honest it was a real toss-up between 'veteran surfer' and 'pirate', but I wanted cool sunglasses and pirates don't wear sunglasses.
. . . What? No, I never considered making him kingly or merfolk or anything of the sort. Don't be absurd. Peace!
-[CoT]-
"How dare you," Hisui growled.
The Hungry Wolf Knights quailed under her gaze. All were bound with magic-sealing Vengestone cuffs, and were sitting in her office, ready to be sentenced.
"How dare you," the princess repeated, glaring at them, her face framed by mountains of paper piled high over her personal desk.
"How dare you force me to do so much paperwork?!"
