(A/N: Just for your info, the Great Red Dragon [mentioned in the chapter] does indeed exist. It was painted by William Blake, and the four titles include "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun", "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun", "The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea", and "The Number of the Beast is 666". Hope I was somewhat informative)


Before Perfection
by The Great Red Dragon
Chapter 15
"Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I've travelled the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something"

-Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
Eurhythmics
I blinked a few times to get the sleep out of my eyes as I sat up on the couch. The sun blared brightly through the twin windows of the living room.

Whoohoo, what a night! We must've gone through at least half of Riley's entire collection while darkness still reigned.
During this time, I had become a complete Scorpions-freak, and already I was wishing for their merchandise. I loved their style of rock, and the mix of vocals. They were a very original band.
Original, heck! 'Geniouses' and 'rulers of the universe' seem to fit more! Why hadn't I ever heard such art on Turo? That bastard Jumba; keeping all the goodies for himself! Well, I couldn't be stopped now – viva la Hurricane!
Scorpions, Scorpions, Scorpions!

I sat up and untangled myself from the blanket.
Blanket?...Riley must've put it on me when I was asleep.
A glance at the clock told me that it was already almost ten. Riley must be gone by now; he said he was doing his hours at the pet shelter, but had promised [before I fell asleep] to be back after lunch and take the rest of the day off. The next day was Saturday, and he had the weekend off.
Sounded great.
I hopped off of the sofa and began to walk around the room, by way of a morning exercise. The squashy, grey carpet felt good under my feet, so I walked for a while around the place, admiring the photographs and books on the shelf. I eventually pulled one forth that had an interesting cover and began skimming through it.

It was full of old-aged, gothic artwork; I fell in love with it at once.
I particularly liked the one with the dragon. Well, there were two of him, but the first was the best:
A colossal man-beast stood over a woman clothed in gold, his long tail wrapped around her waist. Although, it was kinda strange was that the dragon's face was never shown. I turned, bent, and twisted my head as much as an Experiment 541 possibly could, but the beast's face remained ever-hidden.
What was his face like? Was it too horrible to look upon? Was it just like any other human face? Would it be my face?
I became excited nonetheless, and started to envision myself as the Dragon. With my arms spread like his wings, I began stomping around the room, making horrible monster-like noises and baring my teeth. I turned to start in another direction and behold, there stood Lara, garbed in a pink robe and sporting the worst case of bed-hair I had ever seen in my short-lived life.

She stared blankly, while I looked almost apologetically back at her.

"Christ, Riley better make up for this crap", she said finally, and thankfully she moved on.

I waited patiently, listening intently to her as she moved about. I sat on the couch until I heard her climbing the stairs again, signalling the green light of safety.
I just then remembered Riley saying something about leaving me a breakfast in the kitchen. Well, my stomach was making monster noises itself, so I decided to test my metabolism and see if I could gain five pounds in a single sitting (really, I had become extremely skinny in the time I had been on my own: stale slices of bread and pizza don't hold a great number of calories).
Once I had entered the kitchen and admired whatever I saw, I opened the refrigerator carefully. A wave of guilt hit me. The contents were meager, even for a small fridge.

No, it wasn't like Riley and his family were starving, there just wasn't much there. And sadly, a fine portion of the stuff was gingerly wrapped in purple plastic, with a sticky- note of "For Auron" stuck on it.
I only took half of what was packed up; kind Riley, setting aside so much for me, just to make me feel welcome.
I scrunched up the note and threw it into a nearby waste-basket, before returning to the table where I had set up my food.
I ate slowly, looking more at the kitchen than at the food. There wasn't anything much interesting (even though I admired it all), besides the funky-looking refrigerator magnets. The shades of the window were drawn, and I wasn't sure if it was proper for me to open them.

So there I was, sitting on the table, half-ways enjoying my jar of coconut preserve (yes, it DOES exist), thinking about the come of random thoughts, when all of the sudden...

"Hi, Auron!"

I looked around swiftly, and saw little Rebecca standing there in a fluffy, purple night shirt. It was more like a robe, really; that must've been size XXL, and Rebecca more or less swam in it.
She had her usual look of childish pleasure on her face, and she almost tripped as she came towards the table.

"Whoops!", she said as she picked herself back up.
"My nightie's being naughty today!"

She climbed onto the table with me. I wasn't sure what to do.

"Oh heck", I thought.
"I might as well make peace before I become the object of torture."

I looked down at my remaining food and made a decision of what she might like.

"Well, let's see..."

I unearthed a Tupperware box of sweetened raspberries. I opened it with a small popping noise and held it out to Rebecca.

"Is that for me?", she asked.
"Thanks, Auron!"

She took the Tupperware, but instead of eating it like I had expected her to do, she set it down next to her and grabbed me around the neck again.
RED ALERT! RED ALERT! THE NO-TOUCHY SECTOR HAS BEEN VIOLATED! TO ARMS! TO ARMS!
...Well, what could I do? I could hardly push her away; that would hurt her feelings. Plus, I didn't want to get on Riley's bad side this early on. So I just took a breath, counted backwards from ten, and attempted to wait the whole thing out.

It had to happen. For some reason, dear Lara stuck her head in the door and looked at us like...well, the look I had gotten before.

"Rebecca, stop that! You're gonna get a disease or something from that thing!", she said in mock-alert.

A disease?! From me?! This was going too far. Why was she so horrible to me? Had I done something I wasn't even aware of?
Rebecca turned around.

"Don't say that!", she said loudly at her sister.
"Auron doesn't have any diseases!"

"How do you know?", Lara retorted.

Rebecca responded by sticking out her tongue, and Lara left. She turned back to me.

"I'm sorry", she said apologetically.
"Lara's a stupid-head."

Real words of wisdom, kid.
She took me by the hand and started off of the table.

"C'mon!", she said.
"I'll show you my room!"

"Oh man, here we go again...", I thought to myself, as I was pulled behind her.

Still...you couldn't help but love an innocent, sweet kid like Rebecca; she loved me.
Well, the tour was somewhat interesting. I hadn't been on the second story yet (I still hadn't had my shower), so of course I was a bit eager for it.
Alright, here's the bathroom, there's a dust-cupboard, this and that...

"...And this is Riley's room", Rebecca announced, as if the trip was coming to an end.

She pushed open the chipped door (somewhat hesitantly) and led me inside.
Riley's room was well-kept and clean, if you would minus the messed-up bed that lay littered with clothes. I turned the other way, and nearly fell over in surprise.
One entire side of blank wall was given over to four gigantic posters, all of them presenting the same monster I had seen downstairs. Four Dragons, all standing demanding and rampant over a smaller, less opposing figure. Now the Dragon's face was no longer a mystery, but it wasn't just a single face. No, the dragon had seven heads, all of them with a haunting, white-eyed expression.
I took several steps closer to the wall, awe written all over my face. But then I noticed that Rebecca wasn't following. I turned around and saw her nearly cowering in a corner.

"Those things are scary", she said quietly, covering her face with both hands.
"Nobody is supposed to look like that..."

I gave the four Dragons one last look before heading back over to the door. As gently as I could, I nudged Rebecca out the door and closed it behind us.