Chapter 28:
The End... or Not?

As if to prove how horribly inept they were at running a school, the dragonets of destiny decided to lock themselves in the Principal's Office and argue about what to do next. Their whole dynamic had pretty much fallen apart after the first arc. After saving all of Pyrrhia, there really wasn't anywhere for their character arcs to go but down. And three moons, had they gone down.

Outside of the Principle's Office, by the "bad student bench", OC and her friends patiently waited. OC and Hotness did their best to restrain Hopekiller, who kept thinking murderous things, while Expendable did his best to calm Muddy down. Meanwhile, the dragonets of destiny were shouting so loud that the whole school could hear their incompetence.

"Why don't we just give them all detentions?" suggested Sunny. "That's how schools work, right? Right?!"

"Are you kidding me?!" shouted Tsunami. "Ugh, what HAPPENED to you, Sunny?! You used to be smart!"

"Wait!" Clay cried urgently. "Guys... I'm hungry!"

Starflight said something about being blind, then everything dissolved into shouting again.

Outside of the office, everyone looked at Subzero, expecting him to make some sarcastic remark about this. Instead, he just stared back woozily, his eyes big and watery, his wings clamped around himself, and growled, "Wow, did you all already forget I was just blasted with fire?"

"Oops." OC had kind of forgotten that. "Sorry."

"I'll just go drag myself to the infirmary then," he sighed. Then he limped off, still thinking about his ruined scrapbook, leaving the rest of them to deal with the dragonets of destiny. OC worried about him for a moment. Then the door to the Principal's Office opened and she was relatably consumed by the mystery again.

"Okay," squeaked Sunny, "you guys can come in now."

Stay strong. Stay brave. Stay relatable. OC gulped down her fear and led her friends (and captured murderer) in. This was it. Time to prove herself.

As if this story needed even more proof that the dragonets of destiny were completely out-of-character and useless, Tsunami's office was pretty much falling apart. Complaints from enraged students, parents, and monarchs were scattered everywhere, a wall was cracked as if Tsunami had been frustratedly slamming her head into it, and one of the file cabinets was literally on fire.

OC looked around, and her glimmering, rainbow eyes widened. "Wow."

"Now," said Tsunami, summoning up the first bit of courage and control that she'd ever had in this story, "can someone give me a reason not to expel you all right now for attacking a teacher and destroying his study?"

"To be fair," Hotness pointed out, leaping to OC's defense, "this isn't the first time -"

"That's no excuse!" snapped Tsunami.

Though using invading other dragons' privacy now made her feel a little guilty, OC decided now was a serious enough situation to warrant using her powers. She couldn't allow her new official love interest Hotness to get a detention! She swallowed all her ethical concerns and peered into Tsunami's mind.

Most of Tsunami's mind was busy worrying about Riptide, who had apparently disappeared while searching for Webs. We can't BOTH have daddy issues, Riptide! Aaaaargh, it's like he forgets I literally murdered my father...

Fortunately, buried underneath a load of trauma (and some disturbingly violent, but understandable, thoughts about how she would have resolved the last arc), Tsunami was clearly thinking about why she didn't trust OC: This random, gorgeous dragon thinks she can just burst in and ruin our school?! Well, it was already ruined, but she made it way worse! I don't even know who she is.

That's it! thought OC. I just need to tell them the whole story. Yeah, that'll make them trust me.

"Please," she begged the dragonets of destiny, her entrancing eyes shining with beautiful tears of hope, "just let me explain all the evidence."

"Let's give her a chance," Sunny begged her out-of-character friends. "I'm pretty sure there's some family-friendly moral here about understanding other people's stories or something... we have to trust her!"

Tsunami paused to put out the filing cabinet fire, then nodded. "Okay. But be quick about it - no pointless romantic side plots!"

OC did her best to keep all of the pointless romantic subplots to a minimum as she quickly summed up her whole story. A few mentions of Hotness's "gorgeous, hot chocolate eyes" and "soulful, heat-filled stares" slipped in, but the dragonets of destiny were so engrossed by the mystery that they didn't complain. There had been so many plot twists that she couldn't remember them all, so Expendable and Hotness helped out by filling in the details. Meanwhile, Muddy kept Hopekiller quiet by threatening him with one of Tsunami's bloodstained paperweights.

Once she had finally summed up about twenty-eight chapters worth of action and banter, OC stopped and looked at the dragonets of destiny. This story is so crazy and cliché, how could they possibly believe me?

To her relief, Tsunami nodded. "I believe you."

"Me too," said Sunny.

Starflight nodded blindly.

Clay was really thinking about steak, but he nodded as well.

OC's rainbow eyes widened again. "Really? You all believe me? That's so cool!"

"You're just so... relatable. I could really identify with your impossibly naive, yet insanely powerful character," Tsunami said, despite the fact that she should have been the least naive dragon in the room. "Also, you're pretty. Like, really, really, ridiculously pretty. So I think I have to believe you."

"Oh. Wow." OC blushed. She was too relatably shy to take all these compliments. "Uh, thanks?"

Oh no! screamed Hopekiller's thoughts, conveniently loudly. Now that I'm caught, the evil plan is ruined! What will he do when -

OC gasped. An evil plan? A mysterious "he"? What kind of plot twist was this? Unfortunately, before she could hear the rest of Hopekiller's convenient, conspiracy-exposing thoughts, Tsunami started loudly thinking about the plot holes in the last Wings of Fire arc.

"No, no, no..." grumbled OC.

This makes so much more sense than the last big crisis! Why didn't any of Darkstalker's backstory or character development ever add up to anything? Why did Kinkajou never get a book? Tsunami wondered, blocking out all of Hopekiller's crucial secrets. Also, that love triangle was soooo forced; why didn't Moon just...

"W-w-what's wrong, OC?" asked Muddy, shaking her friend.

Too relatably flustered to say anything about this huge new clue, OC just smiled and said, "Nothing. Never mind."

"All right, then!" exclaimed Tsunami. "Let's get this murderer shipped back to Glory. She'll sentence him to some community service, and then we'll have this whole thing behind us."

"Community service?" asked Hotness incredulously.

Tsunami shrugged. "Glory's dating a war criminal. Her justice system is kinda broken."

Hotness winced, but he had to admit that it made sense.

The Puppetmaster will not be pleased with this, Hopekiller thought cryptically as he was led out by some random, convenient guards. Since Jade Mountain Academy had no real prisons, he would probably just be thrown into one of the rooms that was never used, like the Creative Writing classroom, or the gym.

"Wait," said OC, glancing around nervously. It felt wrong for her to be the one pointing out all the inconsistencies, but Subzero wasn't here, so someone had to do it, even if it wasn't relatable at all. "The writing on his notes didn't match his list of victims, and there was that thing with Plottwister's locket, and Webs is still missing! Don't you guys think there's something else going on?"

Sunny laughed. "Oh, OC, there are always a bunch of little plot holes like that. Don't worry about it. You're a hero now!"

"I know!" shouted Tsunami, uncharacteristically chipper. "Let's throw a huge party to celebrate the new heroes! Then everyone can forget the awful stuff and focus on these guys."

"R-r-really?" Muddy smiled. "That's a-awesome!"

Expendable and Hotness grinned, both secretly hoping to ask OC out to the party.

Something twisted in OC. A secret, sickening suspicion. Something's wrong. What's going on here? She tried to shake it off and smile. This had to be right. This had to be the end. "Yeah," she replied brightly, hiding away her doubt, "awesome!"