Author's Notes:

Got nothing up here.


Rock Bottom

"If you can dream it, you can do it."

~ Walt Disney


Joshua sat on an old, rickety bench along an old dirt road. With no life signatures visible to his sixth sense over a two kilometer radius, he was fairly certain anyone who had a telescope or a security camera pointed at his face would be seeing a middle-aged biped in tattered rags, clutching his head in despair.

Thank God the people in "Dragonland" never saw the need for such things here in the park.

"Why is it so hard to find a job‽" He yelled out, to nobody in particular.

Joshua leaned back and stared at the sky. The moon gazed down at him, its scarred face appearing to mock him. Here he was, back on Earth! Just as he'd been dreaming about for all the years he was in the Spyro world!

The only catch was… this was an Earth where all the denizens were warm-blooded reptiles, some capable of flight and others resembling the dinosaurs of all things.

Even the same constellations were there! He wasn't an expert astrologist but he at least found the North Star, Orion's Belt, and the Big Dipper.

The situation was maddening. He was so close to reliving the life he led in his childhood and early teenage years, and the only obstacle barring him was money. Money!

He didn't have that problem back in the Dragon Realms. He had clawed his way up from public enemy #1 to a respectable job and eventually achieved success, becoming a high-flyer in his own right. But all that was gone now. The fact he'd been sent hurtling to rock bottom was infuriating.

At the very least, there was no way he'd go hungry here. As humiliating as it was, dumpster diving typically yielded decent food. Microscopic pathogens weren't a problem to someone who could disinfect or even drain their puny life force at a touch, but there was no solution to the foul remnants they left behind. On the other paw, he could venture out to the nearby beach, since fish and crabs were easy pickings.

Only thing he had to avoid over there were the dragons. The waterside had plenty of regular visitors, but two of them were the most dangerous to him—the yellow delivery wyvern he'd seen on his first night here and a greyish-blue sea dragon, who just happened to be a police officer! He couldn't afford exposing himself to them.

He's lucky enough that the people here didn't bother too much with security cameras. Those things pervaded places like the police department or city hall, but they were completely absent inside commercial centers and residential areas. It reminded Joshua of a small town back on his Earth, where nothing happened, where everyone knew practically everybody.

Joshua once thought of revealing himself in public, but he immediately rejected the idea after he spent his first day gathering information under perception masking, eavesdropping on passersby.

Humans were considered mythological beings here. They featured in creation myths. They were spoken about in legends, the most prominent one being that they had created dragonkind and uplifted them before disappearing to Azeroth knew where. Some considered them to be technologically advanced, centuries ahead of the present age. Other schools of thought held humanity as magical beings—gods who conjured tools of destruction from thin air or warped reality to suit their needs.

What scant imagery they had of humans ranged from the adorable to the terrifying, and none were accurate. Joshua had seen or heard of several descriptions by now. One pictured humans as grotesque sasquatches, with eight arms, hooves, and glowing hands. An apparent fan favorite was a tall monkey with a short tail, glowing hands, hooved feet, and an oversized head. A runner-up would be a completely hairless albino, with blue eyes, a large head with equally large ears, glowing many-fingered hands, and a terrifying set of teeth.

Joshua had no idea where they were all going with these imagery, but it was clear that not a single person in this town—in this entire civilization—ever considered humans to be regular people like themselves. They were to the dragons here as dragons were to the folk back on Joshua's Earth.

So if he revealed himself here, freely wielding the power he had received from his first transmigration, how would they react? They'd see him as one of their legends come to life, and, possibly, a danger to their society.

He was sure the people here would react with malicious intent. That runner everybody called Anna would look at him like a guinea pig, no doubt.

Joshua shuddered, the portly face of Master Eon flashed in his mind. An old man with a kind exterior and a shrewd, calculating mind. He clutched his head. "Get a grip on yourself, man," he told himself. "He's not here. They're all in another universe." It didn't help that he still had nightmares of that crafty Magus.

It didn't take much coaxing for Joshua to reorient himself towards his current problem. After a few more minutes thinking, maybe an hour, the fugitive had come up with a solution, albeit one he didn't like.

He needed to make friends. Once he got to know them, he could state his case. Throw up his sob story and then… maybe get a decent job?

It was worth a shot, but for that, he needed money. He required cold, hard cash.

Joshua Renalia rose to his feet, a scowl appearing on his face. He'd have to steal the money. Distasteful, yet, he didn't have a choice in the matter. How could he buy food? How could he get drinks? How could he socialize with anyone here if he didn't have money?

Wandering towards town, he scanned his surroundings for easy targets. Joshua had scavenged a few rags to wrap around himself like a cloak, just as Hunter and Corvold had taught him years ago. He couldn't do anything about the lack of a tail, but it was perfect for concealing everything else about himself.

Joshua eyed an elderly dragon he recognized, slowly pushing an ice cream cart to wherever he lived. He usually left late, oblivious to the town's new human resident, and often after a day without selling anything. Poor guy. He was probably running out of money himself. No wonder he would stay out here and stare at the sky while he waited for customers who'd never come.

Joshua scratched the ice cream vendor off the list and moved closer to the commercial center. He caught a glimpse of the strange, alien structure visible at the top of the nearby hill. He had asked someone about this once, while he'd been masking his species, and learned they were supposedly human-made. Figures. People ascribed anything they couldn't comprehend to the divine or the magical. That had been true on his Earth as much as it had been true on the Dragon Realms.

Clearly sapient species had similar tendencies no matter what universe they were in.

Joshua knew he'd reached his destination when the place everybody called "Zhong's bar" entered his sights. He clutched his rags, which he'd worn like a cloak around his features. Spheres of life popped into his sixth sense—a constellation he could only view with his mind.

He ducked into the alleyways between buildings to avoid direct line of sight. Each breath was labored. His muscles ached terribly. How he missed his physique in the old days! He'd been able to impress Hunter of all felines back then, and that guy was hard to please.

"Spring of Fortune," Joshua complained. "Give me a lucky break. Come on…"

Ventura seemed to shine on him as a lone mark materialized in his mental constellation. A blue star, bright and vibrant. Someone happily going somewhere, looking forward to a good night's sleep, a drink at a bar that wasn't manned by Zhong, or another fulfilling tomorrow.

Joshua dismissed the doubts—the guilt seeping into his head as he focused on that person and stalked them. He extended his ego around her life signature, stumbling when the additional senses invaded his brain. It was like switching on a camera in an entirely new location. He saw double. He felt double, brain recognizing the footfalls of their paws as his own. It even fooled his mind into believing he had a pair of wings and a tail sprouting from his body.

This would've been an astoundingly disorienting experience to the Joshua who had just moved to the second floor of the Warfang Temple, barely two months into his transmigration. But to the Joshua of the present time? This was nothing, if not familiar territory he had tread for years.

His mark—a female—strolled leisurely about the sidewalk, unaware of the misfortune about to befall her. Joshua gritted his teeth when he recognized the particular street she was on: the very one that contained the police station of all places! A cop‽

If Joshua had any sense, he would've aborted this and targeted someone else. But he was too close to her now, and nearly within visual range. He didn't want to relinquish her, not when the promise of money—of socializing—of an actual job—was so damn close he could almost taste it!

A yellow dragoness flashed in his mind. Sparking blue eyes. Curved horns. A single wing. The last time they had seen each other, her eyes were level with his chest. Before that, only to his waist. Joshua shut his eyes, heaving a sigh. "Kilat… thank Azeroth you're not here to see how far your older brother has fallen."

Banishing his thoughts and his guilt away, he concentrated on his target. He slipped behind the intended victim after she turned the corner and headed for the apartment homes a few blocks away. Claws clacking on the gravel, she never realized the world's only human appeared behind her.

Joshua nearly aborted his mission when he recognized the person in front of him. It was that water dragon he always saw at the nearby beach, enjoying the waves. Her build and her appearance were far closer to that of someone from the Dragon Realms, sporting horns, frills, fins, wings, and four paws. Her spiral horns in particular looked frightening; surely those would go straight through his body, despite the mutations he'd undergone during his first transmigration.

Joshua was thankful that the dragons here didn't have elements, unlike the other place. They spat either combustible liquid or venomous acid, and that only included those who had glands in their throats at all. Other than whatever modern technology could provide, there was nothing here that could seriously threaten him.

Joshua Renalia skulked closer to the water dragon. His ego boundaries had enveloped hers. "Discernment." Through his power, he cut off her ability to perceive him by sight. He removed his scent from her brain. "Deliberation." His viridian eyes rested on the pouch swinging on her neck. He was right next to her now. All he had to do was reach in and take her wallet. "Determina—

Without warning, the dragoness lurched sideways and whipped around. Her thick tail smacked into Joshua, knocking him off-balance. The middle-aged human stumbled back several steps, but he did not fall on his butt. His mark gasped upon seeing him; she had not been expecting someone there.

"Did you think you could sneak up on an officer?" She snarled. "I heard you coming a mile away!" She stood her ground and bared her teeth. Her claws unfurled. She bowed her head, ready to train it on Joshua in a split second. "You must be so brazen to think—

Then her eyes focused on him. Another gasp. "W-what are you? You don't look like a runner…"

Joshua blinked. He connected again to her sphere of life and belatedly realized his own concealment had vanished when she struck him and forced him out of his concentration.

"Cat's out of the bag now," Joshua said, deepening his voice as much as his vocal cords allowed. "But don't worry, lady, I'm not going to hurt you." He pictured the dragoness lying unconscious on the streets, completely out cold. "I just want your money."

She snorted. "Y-you must be stupid to—huh‽"

Joshua sprinted to the dragoness, startling her. His arms went alight in an aura of purple and white. For a moment, she froze. Through his connection to her ego, he felt a twitching in her forepaws and neck. A split-second later, green fluid jetted out of her mouth.

Joshua eluded it by a hair's breadth—a standard evasion—and came upon the water dragon in the next moment. He touched her shoulder. A weak flash of white light radiated from their point of contact.

When it receded, she was down. She would be unconscious for the next several minutes. Exactly as he had deliberated.

Joshua Renalia had won. Yet, he felt hollow inside. Empty, even.

Had he been transmigrated to this alternate Earth instead of the Dragon Realms, this dragoness would have been no different from a deadly beast for him. She would've slain him without even knowing what he was, and easily at that.

But he was someone who had come from a world that wasn't his own, gained power, and matured there. She had no chance from the start. Joshua felt disgusted with himself. Attacking this officer and using his power on her was no different from bullying. This was completely senseless. It wasn't even a matter of survival for him! She just had something he could use to get what he wanted, not what he needed. How, then, did that make him different from the very Magi he was hiding from?

He felt unbelievably dirty.

With these thoughts in mind, Joshua fished her wallet out of the small bag dangling on her neck. Sensing life signatures appearing within his detection radius, he decided to retreat back to the forest between the town and the "human-made" structure on the hill.

Joshua absconded the scene of the crime, his cheeks burning from guilt and humiliation. He could only hope this incident wouldn't bite back at him. Knowing his luck? It probably would.

As people said in the Dragon Realms… you fly where you turn.


Author's notes:

Joshua's power actually adheres to a list of rules. The nature of his ability is still being explored in the fanfic he's from. If you're curious about him, perhaps you would like to read his story? Check out Aimless in the Spyro fanfiction archives. It is a fic set four years after the events of the Legend trilogy.