It was just another day at the facility.
Scientists and officials moved back and forth, just like the rest of the staff who worked on the place. All of them were on the move to take care of their assignments, and they still had time to chat with each other about the most varied subjects. Kindle had time to talk with Legoshi, and she would be asking about the bunny fiancé of his', and if he could talk to her so she would let Kindle by her bridesmaid at their wedding. Legoshi was not sure, since Haru didn't knew Kindle personally, but he promised the dragoness that he would talk to bunny about it.
Overall, it seemed that it was a normal day at the facility.
That is, as normal as a place that was secretly housing thirteen purple dragons that were preparing to save the world from certain doom could be.
Some thought that the place was surprisingly calm considering the legendary dragons that were in that place, from an ancestor ruler of Warfang to a rebellious member of a family of elite assassins. Some even said that the place was boring, although it could be quite interesting when you were to watch them training.
Overall, it seemed to be just another regular day at that facility.
Until someone realized something was off.
It was during a point when someone asked the Stars (that was how they were calling the purple dragons) to gather for a meeting. It was to discuss possible new options for training. All of the Stars were present in there. Save for three of them, and for a black dragoness.
At first, they thought that those four could be somewhere else in the facility. So, the surveillance team was ask to localize them, so they could have someone go and fetch them.
It seemed to be simple enough. Until the surveillance team called back to inform that they were not able to localize any of the four dragons anywhere in the facility.
Of course, it had to be a mistake. They were order to check a second time, and a third time, and then a fourth time. The results always came the same. The four dragons were not in the facility.
That was when someone thought about asking someone to retrace their steps over the facility, and in it, they realized that it was possible to see them until they reached on one of the few blind spots of surveillance, and then they just vanished. It was also notice that they had a few things with them.
After talking to some people at the facility, soon they made a list of what they took. This list included four objects embedded with chameleon crystals.
"They wanted them to make a game between themselves. They planned to make a little theater or something." Said one of the soldiers, the one who supplied the chameleon crystal items to them. "I mean, what else could they want with objects that can change the color of their scales?"
To go out in the city without anyone knowing their true nature.
"Funny, the Jester said a joke like that when I asked about it, and then the Burglar corrected him and said that it was for their little play... Ohhhhhhhh..."
They realized it now, and now they had a whole new thing to worry about.
The four young dragons had eloped from the facility! Now they were out on the city!
Those little rascals!
There were many ways that they could get in trouble out there! So many that only a computer would be able to count them all!
Those young dragons didn't truly understood the world out there! They had received introductions, but they still lacked much of the understanding that was need to navigate normally in the world out there!
The poor kids thought that they could navigate in the world, but they would probably be render helpless as soon as they saw what was out there!
"Sugooooooooooooi!" Shiryu said, as he looked around in amazement, and so did the other dragons around him. Spyro and Cynder had open mouths as they looked at everything that was around them. Adamaius also looked with a certain interest, but he seemed to be far less impressionable than the others. Still, it did seemed that he was somehow amazed.
All around them, a futuristic city was in the place of the medieval-style place that Spyro and Cynder once knew. The streets of the city now were made of some material that was a combination of natural rock with refined metal. Buildings of all kinds rose around them, rising to the sky as either cylindrical shapes or rectangular edifications, so high that Spyro and Cynder would have to fly a while to get to the very top of them. The highest of those constructions was so high that the very tip of it got lost somewhere among the clouds. That was how high it was.
Also, there was the vehicles around them. Spyro and Cyder remembered chariots from their time, but they were nothing compared to the types of vehicles that they saw now. These chariots made of metal could fly! They could float in the air and move through it like clouds or even birds. Some of them so fast that it only passed by them as a blur and disappeared from sight before they could properly identify the shape that it had.
There was also more of those holographic projections. It was like Asher's posters, but those were so big that they covered the front of some buildings. Some of them were like screens to pass programs and commercials, while others were animated and illusory versions of statues. These projections were everywhere, and it seemed that they served other purposes than just decoration, as some of them were in the air, and they seemed to serve to tell both flying creature and vehicles when and where to move, so they wouldn't suffer an accident up in the air. They seemed to a real need, with the amount of vehicles and winged creatures that there were up there, moving across the air.
And we are not talking only about dragons, as other creatures were flying across the air. Creatures that Spyro and Cyder didn't have had contact with yet, although they heard about it. There were harpies, there were winged horses, there were gryphons like that whose shadow they rode to out of the facility, and there were hippogriffs, which were like the gryphons, but being half-eagle/half-horse, instead of half-eagle/half-lion. Trully, many creatures moved through the air, as well as many moved through the ground, like dragons who preferred to walk insisted of flying, and dragons who didn't had wings to fly. Other creatures also moved around, like a few unicorns, some dog-like creatures, minotaurs, centaurs, cheetahs, some bunnies over there, an entire variety of creatures that moved back and forth across the city.
By the way, it could be only an impression caused by the new layouts in the architecture, the bigger constructions, and the bigger amount of creatures in there, but Spyro and Cynder could swear that the city looked bigger than back on their time. The streets seemed bigger, and the dimensions of the city seemed different to the two dragons. It looked the same as it did back on their day, and it didn't seemed the same at the same time. It was hard to actually put it into words, and the two dragons hardly even knew how to describe the feeling they were having, or if that feeling even made sense.
As the two dragons thought about it, Shiryu simply marveled at how big the city was. The younger of the four dragons had never been out in Warfang before. No surprise in there, considering that he was from a faraway land, somewhere on the other side of the ocean. This was his first time going out on any modern city and he was already marveling at how big, beautiful, dazzling it was, and that it had so many curious creatures out there.
As for Adamaius?
He looked around with feigned disinterest, even though he was amazed with the size and magnitude of the city, and by the technology that it had in there. From all of the Stars, Adam was among the ones who were the closer in time from the current period. He had been born when cars, buildings and televisions were already a thing, but holograms and flying cars were still a promise of the sci-fi stories and movies. He was now seeing all of those things around him, and while it was amazing, it was not as baffling, since he already half-expected something like that. Also, he was glad to finally be out of the facility and being able to walk around. There was no better feeling than being able to go where he wanted. Even the marvels of the future paled in comparison to the feeling of knowing that he was now free, even if it was only until the guys of the facility realized they got away and came to take them back.
Until them, he was going to enjoy it the most he could.
Now, it would probably be easier if any of them knew where they were going.
They walked across the street of the city, making turns, sometimes taking flight to have a better view and to move around better, but they were still having some trouble to orientate themselves into that city. And they almost got in trouble with other people as they failed to follow the indications on the street.
"Hey! Watch where you are flying! You are going against the flow!"
"Careful! This lane is for hoovers, you can't just go flying in there! They might hit you!"
"Hey! Don't cross the lanes like that! Haven't you saw the signs?"
Spyro and Cynder were completely lost at this, and this bothered them. Shiryu was also lost, but he was not as bothered, even though he seemed to get upset when someone yelled at him. Adamaius seemed the one who had a clue of what was going on.
"Do you see those floating holograms that show arrows pointing at a direction?" He said, gesturing to the holograms. "They serve to show the routes where you need to fly when flying on that specific path, so you won't collide with someone else flying in the opposite direction. Those holographic pathways on the air? I think they are for the flying vehicles; they need it because otherwise flying would be a mess. And they even have those signals that pop up before them to control the flow. Red means "stop", green means "go". It serves to make flying and moving around safer, since there are many people in here. It avoids accidents."
Yeah, that certainly made sense. Still, there were a lot more of holographic signals, and Spyro and Cynder were having problem to understand then, and understand which ones actually signed anything and which ones were only decoration or "commercial". Of course, the other half of their problem was to keep up with Shiryu.
The noodle-like dragon was the most excited about this of all of them. His attention jumped from one thing to the other with amazing speed, and it seemed to hardly focus on anything for more than ten seconds. He was so pump up by this new strange world presented to him that he wanted to see all of it at once. As a result, he was the one who as leading the group.
Well, "leading" was not the right word in this situation. It would be better to say that he was rushing ahead to see everything, and the rest of the group was forced to rush right after him to keep up and not to lose the younger dragon from their sight.
It was quite tiring and, more than once, they had to rush forward to catch up with Shiryu before he could get himself (and consequently all of them) in some serious problem with all those city people.
Speaking of which:
"How come you kids run around in front of a car like that?" The adult indigo dragon asked the teenagers, who had nearly been trampled as they ran after Shiryu, who had ran off to see a vending machine with floating snacks in it named "GRAVI-TONES". "Do your parents know what you are all doing? Where even are your parents, anyway?"
"None of your business, that's where." Adamiaus said to the indigo dragon, who looked at him with anger. However, Adam barely gave him attention, for his was far too focus on Shiryu, who was once more floating away in look for something else, probably more trouble to get into.
"Look, I'd love to stay and talk to you, officer." Adam said, looking at the older dragon, "But I am babysitting that floating dragon over there, and I'll be in trouble if he gets in trouble. So, if you have any doubt, you can talk to my little brother and his girlfriend over here." Adam gestured at Spyro and Cynder, and they both looked back at him.
"Guys, you can handle it." Adam said, and he soon was leaving to go after Shiryu, ignoring the way that Spyro and Cynder tried to get him to stop and stay, as he vanished turning a corner after Shiryu, leaving the two dragons to handle the situation.
"Okay then, I'll need you two to come with me." The indigo dragon said, and Spyro and Cynder shared a look, before they were going along with the dragon. He took them to some kind of booth in the middle of the street, which depicted some kind of console.
"I'll need to be calling your parents. I need to confirm what your brother said, and explain to them what you all have been doing." The indigo dragon said, and he looked at the younger male. Spyro looked back at him as he asked:
"Okay, what is your contact?"
"What?" Spyro asked.
"Your contact. The one of your house. Or maybe the one of one of your parents." The indigo dragon explained, and Spyro looked at him for a few seconds, trying to understand what he was asking. That was when he realized that it was about the contact used for these long-distance communication devices. He was asking for the contact to try to reach their relatives.
Spyro and Cynder didn't had any relative with contacts. Worse yet, they didn't knew any kind of contacts. They didn't even really knew how this contact thing worked!
"O-oh... I... Well... huhhhh..." The purple dragon disguised as red stammered, and the indigo dragon looked back at him.
"What is your contact boy?" The older dragon asked, and Spyro continued to stammer. Eventually, the indigo dragon said:
"Alright, you can type it yourself." He said, opening space for the younger dragon to step forward. Spyro hesitated, but he eventually stepped forward, and looked at the console in front of him.
Spyro had been learning more about technology in the past week with Asher, but he still was a long way before he could properly use it like the ones of this era. In fact, he had little to no idea how the device before him actually worked. He even turned to look at Cydner for help, but the look that the dragoness gave him told that she was as clueless about it as he was.
"Come on, kid." The indigo dragon pressed on. "I don't have all day."
Spyro looked at him, and nodded, before he turned his attention back to the console.
Okay, up until now, he had seen that most of those interactive consoles worked through proximity. So, maybe if he passed his paw right over it...
It worked, and an entire holographic keyboard manifested before him. Spyro was a bit taken back, but managed to recover and hide his surprise from the older dragon. Okay, so, he probably had to type those things. He once hear someone refer to each other's "contacts" as "numbers". So, this meant that he should focus on the numbers. With that in mind, Spyro typed a few numbers, only for a red beeping message of ERROR appear before him.
"Hey, what are you doing?" The indigo dragon said to him, "You have to start with the first three letters of your current regional location." He said, chastising Spyro as if he was telling him something that should be obvious. The purple dragon was a little taken aback, but he recovered, and started to type a few letters on it, only for the indigo dragon to stop him.
"Hey, this is not Warfang's regional code." The dragon said, looking at the younger one. This caused the dragon to stumble on the keyboard once more. "This is the regional code for Eques, back in the unicorn county. I know because my best friend lives in there. What, do your parents live in there? Did you flew all the way up here by yourself?"
"O-oh... I-I..." Spyro stammered, and the indigo dragon looked at him and at Cynder.
"Did you ran away from home or something?" He asked them.
Well, it was the "something", but they were not going to ask the older dragon that.
"N-no..." Spyro said, and he once more tried to type at the thing, trying to cancel what he already wrote, but this caused another error message. The indigo dragon looked at him.
"Wait. You know how to use a telecom system, don't you?" He asked, and Spyro panicked for a second.
"O-of course I do!" He said, a little louder than he had intended. "J-just give me a second, please." He said, in a more controlled tone, and turned his attention at the board, and he tried to remember what Asher had taught him about those keyboards. However, as he continued trying to fix things, more error messages appeared, and the more nervous Spyro got. At some point, he somehow managed to activate the anti-fire systems of the booth.
Spyro cried out in surprise as the clouds of anti-fire gas fell upon him, causing him to stumble out of the booth just as a jet of anti-fire foam was expelled from a hose and hit the indigo dragon, causing him to stumble back and land on his back as the foam covered him. He was blinded as it got on his face, and he cursed as he tried to clean it be best he could, as a whole crowd was being drawn to the place by the commotion, which included the sirens that were sounding from the booth.
Spyro and Cynder looked at the mess that the disguised purple dragon had created, and looked at each other, before they sprint into running. The commotion as the perfect cover for their escape.
"Shiryu!" Adamaius said, as he walked across the street, not minding if others thought he was being too loud.
"Shiryu! Where are you, you floating noodle!?"
Great, it now seemed that he had lost Shiryu. He had been able to follow him without problems as he entered that street that was fill with holographic depictions of toys and cartoon characters. Most of it were toy and videogame stores, the kind of things that dragons at Shiryu's age and younger usually went crazy over.
As soon as they entered that street, Shiryu started to zip across the air like a missile from place to place. Occasionally he would stop to look at the trailer of some game or to look at some neat-looking toy. Of course, only for two or three seconds, before he shifted his attention to something else and would snake himself through the air at a surprising speed to see it.
He moved so quickly that even Adam, with his years of training to become an assassin, had trouble to keep up with him. Eventually, he lost his sight of the noodle-like dragon, and was left to look for him using the rest of his senses.
"Darn! If that boy puts himself in trouble..." Adam said, as he walked past an intersection, that was when he caught it.
On the corner of his eye, he saw a shape of a green coloration. The same shade of green that Shiryu acquired when he put his tail band. With a little dash of light purple of the fur on his tail and around his head.
"Shiryu!" Adam said, turning to look at the eastern dragon, and Shiryu looked at him, before waving at the distance.
"Hey! Adam!" The noodle dragon waved back, and Adam screamed something back at him along the lines of 'Don't go off like that, you moron!'
Shiryu was saying something back, but he then stopped to look at something at his side, and he soon was turning to look at it, before he moved in direction to it.
"Wait, wait! Where are you going!? Shiryu!" Adam cried out, but was ignore as the other disguised dragon moved inside that specific building.
"Dammit!" Adam growled, before he rushed in direction to the place he saw Shiryu entering. He passed by many other creatures on his path, surprising them as he dashed on their way suddenly, some of them stumbling back, some of them neatly going down, and some of them calling at the dragon to "be careful!" or just calling him names.
Adam ignored all of them, as he only wanted to get to that specific store and find Shiryu in there before he got into trouble.
As he got in front of the place, he could take a good look at it. It was a store, mostly with pink and pastel shades. Above the place, there was a huge sign showing the name of the place: SWEET DREAMS. The "A" had been replaced with a slice of cake, and the M looked like it had frosting and cherries on top of it, and the two "S" looked like they were made of cookie. If that name and the style of it were not enough, the fact that the window of the store showed all manners of sweets in front left no doubt.
Adamaius walked inside of the bakery, and looked around the place. It looked as bucolic as someone could expect from a little bakery, but it also had a flair of fancy, as if the place was also a gourmet bakery. The insides had the same shades of pink and pastels from the entrance, and the place was fill with sweets.
Cupcakes were place in lines upon lines of floating dishes, suspended by what Adam thought could be anything from localized electric magic to antigravity, like that which allowed Shiryu to fly. There were also very expensive sculptures made of sweets, from cookie houses to fancy sculptures made of crystalized sugar. Everywhere you looked, you could see sweets. They all looked pretty tempting, as it was clear by the longing eyes of the little children who looked at all of the candy, many of them begging their parents to buy a specific one. Someone passed by Adam as they were carrying a literal tower of cupcakes. However, Adam didn't gave them any attention, he was more focused on finding his companion.
"Shiryu!" Adam called out, granting some to look at him. "Shiryu!"
"Excuse me?" Someone said, making Adam turn to whoever it was. It was a female cheetah, wearing a pink apron over her dress, bearing the same name of the lettering outside. She was carrying a cupcake meant for adult dragons, which she had to carry with both of her arms due to the size difference.
"May I help you, sir?" She asked.
"No." Adam said, but he then thought better. "Actually, yes. I am looking for someone who entered here. He is an eastern dragon with green scales and light purple fur."
"Oh, is he that young one who floated to the cake isle?"
Cake is- OH CRAP!
Adam arrived in the cake isle, only to find Shiryu in the middle of it. He was immobile, looking with a thousand-yard stare as his mouth hung agape, a look of pure shock on his face. The only movement of the eastern dragon was the slow rotation that he was making, clockwise sense, as he continued to stare at everything around him.
And what a "everything" it was.
Cakes of all shapes and sizes were around them. Some of them were small enough that Adam could easily carry one on his back; others were so big that he, Shiryu and the other two would probably be able to use them as podiums. Cakes covered in frosting. Cakes with fancy decoration. Naked cakes. Cakes with extremely intricate patterns on them made with frosting and mass of sugar for cakes, which looked like someone had take several hours to make. There were cakes with two, even three stores. Cakes with fruits on top of them. Cakes of various flavors. Chocolate, vanilla, orange, blueberry, dragon fruit, strawberry, lemon, marble, all of the flavors one could possibly imagine and conceive for a cake to have.
Some of those cakes were, indeed, quite impressive, and that much Adam could admit. He was nearly admire at this. Or, at least he would be, if he wasn't worried about Shiryu.
The eastern dragon continued to spin in there, still without moving a muscle as he floated in the air and rotated, what made him look like a chandelier right in the middle of the cake isle. However, as Adam got closer, he saw small signs that made him worried. Movements of the tail and paws. Twitching of the eyes and corners of the mouth. Great level of saliva forming and leaking from the tongue. And the way that the body trembled with barely contained excitement.
Adam continue to approach, and the trembling seemed to get worse. Shiryu was starting to make a strange noise. This only made Adam even more worried.
"Shiryu..." Adam said, approaching with care, as if that dragon was bomb that could go off if he made some sudden move. "Shiryu. Are you listening to my voice?" He asked, and the other dragon had stopped in the middle of the air. He was trembling so much that it now nearly seemed that he was having a seizure. Adam knew instantly that it was only a matter of time now.
"Shiryu. Look, I know that it may be asking too much, but right now I need you to-" Adam never finished that sentence, because suddenly, Shiryu went:
"KēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēēkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
It started out as a squeal, but it grew in both volume and pitch, until it became an ear-splitting screech. It forced Adam to cover his earholes and startled nearly everyone who was at the store. Some children squeaked and rushed close to their mothers, and one of the employees who was carrying the cupcakes dropped all of them at the ground.
By the time it stopped, Shiryu dropped to the ground, and started to move his body in a very strange way.
"Oh, for the love of Tiamat..." Adam said, as he saw the familiar movements that seemed a very elaborated for of break dancing. All of that accompanied by the loud and happy singing:
"Kēki! Kēki! Amai kēki! Oishī kēki! Kēki! Kēki! Amai kēki! Oishī kēki! Kēki! Kēki! Watashi wa kēki ga daisukidesu!"
Adamaius felt the urge to smack his own face, only so he wouldn't go in there and smack Shiryu's head.
"Shiryu. Shiryu!" Adam called, but was ignore.
"Kēki! Kēki! Amai kēki! Oishī kēki!" Shiryu was snaking through the ground, before he would jump up and make a flip, before once more snaking.
"Okay, you love cakes, I get it! Now cut that out!"
"Kēki! Kēki! Amai kēki! Oishī kēki!" Shiryu was now marching from one side to the other, seeming like a soldier taking part on a parade.
"Shiryu! I am serious!"
"Kēki! Kēki! Watashi wa kēki ga daisukidesu!" Shiryu curled himself into wheel by grabbing his own tail, and was now spinning around like a wheel around the isle. Dragons and other creatures, employees and patrons alike, were being draw to the noise, and were looking at the developing scene.
"Okay, people are staring."
"Kēki! Kēki! Amai kēki! Oishī kēki!" Shiryu was now bouncing around by passing from his back to his front and then to his back again, making him look like a spring. Everyone just continued to look at it, some with wide eyes, and some with raised eyebrows.
"There are, like, a lot of people staring." Adam said, worried about the fact that they were attracting so much attention upon themselves.
"Kēki! Kēki! Watashi wa kēki ga daisukidesu!" Shiryu was now balancing on his hind legs, jumping from foot to foot while he waved his front legs on the air, following the music that only played inside of his own head, before he jumped and landed with his chin on the ground, his whole body twisting to form a coil.
"Shiryu! Enough!"
Then, the eastern dragon jumped, and started to float into the air, still moving his body as if he was dancing.
"Oh, Tiamat..." Adam growled, as Shiryu continued to move in the air, and now he was making strange shapes with his entire body.
The eastern dragon was using his long and flexible body to form kanjis.
"Ke-i-ki! Ke-i-ki! Ke-i-ki! Ke-i-ki! Ke-i-ki!" He said, with each sound he formed the corresponding kanji with his body, before dashing upwards, while crying out:
"Kēkiiiiiiiiii!"
Everyone continued to look at the young dragon. Meanwhile, Adamaius covered his face with his paw. He looked like he wanted to sink into the earth and disappear from sight.
"Kēki! Kēki!" Shiryu called out happily from up there, before turning his head down.
"Watashi wa kēki ga daisukidesu!"
Adam's eyes widened and he looked up in time to see the eastern dragon dive like a missile. Straight direct to the cakes.
"NO!" Adam said, jumping and managing to intercept Shiryu before he collided with the shelve full of cakes.
The two dragons rolled across the ground, and soon, Shiryu was shooting direction to the cakes. However, he was once more stop by Adam, who was now holding onto his hind paws with his front ones. Shiryu was trying to move in direction to the cakes, his front paws outstretched and making grabbing motions while Adam held him back.
"Shiryu! Will... you... cut that out?" Adam said, the younger dragon continued trying to keep him from going in direction to the cakes, and Adam kept holding him. The younger dragon would keep moving, trying to go from one shelve to the other, but stopping short as Adam held him back.
All the while, a bunch of creatures watched the scene.
"Shiryu, stop!"
"Adam... Tebanasu... Kēki..." Shiryu wined, still trying to move in direction to the cakes, but Adam was holding him back.
"Cut that OUT!" Adam said, finally losing his cool and yanking at the hind legs of the eastern dragon, causing him to be pull back and collide with Adam. They both stumbled into the ground, and now Adam was trying to pin the younger dragon down. However, Shiryu proved to be hard to hold back with his serpentine body and natural agility, all of that empowered by the proximity to so much cake.
"Kēki!" Shiryu said, trying to lunge at a nearby shelve.
"No!" Adam said, grabbing him and putting him in a chokehold.
"Kēki shitai!" Shiryu said, moving his elongated body in a way that he slipped free from Adam's grip.
"No cake for you!" Adam said, putting him into another hold, this one by holding his front paws and placing a hind paw on his back.
"Kēki ga hitsuyōdesu!" Shryu said, floating and flipping his body in a way that Adam was now the one underneath him. He almost managed to escape now.
"Shiryu! I am losing my patience with you!" Adam said, grabbing Shiryu by the cake and pulling him back, and now once more wrestling with him.
Everyone looked in shock as the two dragons wrestled in the ground. Adam had his front legs being use as arms to hold onto the younger dragon and forcing him into submission, while the eastern dragon would answer by coiling his long body around Adam as if he was a snake and biting on his arm. Probably imagining that the arm was a piece of cake, considering how much he was slobbering as he bit on it.
Darn! Even assassinating an adult dragon much bigger than himself wasn't nearly as hard as holding back that cake-addicted boy!
Adam and Shiryu both grunted as they wrestled on the ground. For a moment, they were completely oblivious to the fact that they had an audience for their little struggle, until...
"Ahem." A deep voice said as a shadow fell over the two dragons. They stopped and both looked up.
The dragon looked back at them with a neutral look. He had scales of a dark-grey coloration, so deep that they were nearly black, and he had a softer, but metallic, shade of grey on his muzzle and down his neck, the came coloration of the membrane on his wings. His massive horns were lustrous, looking like they were made of some metallic material, just like his double-axe tailblade. He looked to be massive, and a wall of muscles. Still, he definitely didn't seemed intimidating. Not with that cupcake-shaped little hat on his head and the pink apron tied over his chest and underbelly with the name of the store. His green eyes definitely didn't seemed threatening as he looked at the two young dragons.
"Hello." He said, and the two dragons looked back at him for a few seconds. Shiryu let go of Adam's arm, and was looking in amazement at the massive dragon.
"Wow! You are so big!" Shiryu said, and the dark-grey dragon nodded at him.
"Yeah, I hear a lot of that."
They continued to look at him for a few seconds, before Shiryu once more tried to escape from Adam to lunge at the cakes.
"Stop it!" Adam said, still pulling him back, and this time it seemed that he had managed to hold down the younger dragon, who was still trying to reach for the cakes.
"Alright, not wanting to interrupt in... whatever you two are doing." The older dragon said, looking at the two. "My name is Steelum Ironheart, I am the owner of this store, and I'd like to know if there is any problem happening in here."
"No." Adam said, looking back at him. "No problem at all."
"I ask because I noticed some commotion happening in this isle, and also someone mentioned something about two young dragons fighting in here."
"Oh, we are not fighting." Adam said. If we were, I would have killed him twenty times already. "I am just keeping my... step-brother from acting on a very expensive impulse." Adam concluded, pulling Adam down and managing to put him in a hold from which he could not escape.
"Kēki o tabenakya..." Shiryu whined, still trying to grab the cake. Steelum looked at them.
"An impulse, you say?"
"He loves cake." Adam said, looking at the older dragon, "Goes crazy whenever he sees it. It is a little problem he has, my mother put him on therapy to fix that. By the way, I need to take him to the therapist right now! Let's go, Shiryu, time for your medic."
"M-matte... Kēki..." Shiryu whined, still trying to reach for the shelves, while Adam started dragging him away. Meanwhile, Steelum looked at the two of them.
"Before you go..." Steelum said, causing Adam to stop and look at him. "How about you got some free samples?"
"What?" Adam said; even Shiryu had stopped struggling to look at the older dragon. He was smiling at the two of them.
"Today is a special day." Steelum said, "Today it marks twenty years since I opened this store and started my career as a baker. So, as way of celebrating, we are giving away free samples to costumers. You can have a sample of any produce we have, but you can only sample each product one time, and you can't have more than three free samples."
"Can we have cakes!?" Shiryu immediately blurted out. Adam looked down at him, but Steelum only chuckled at the excited young dragon.
Soon, the two younger dragons were take away from the cake isle. Shiryu was still sad for moving away from the many cakes, but that vanished as soon as Steelum said that he would have slices of any three cakes he wanted. This nearly caused the younger dragon to go ballistic once more.
Luckily, Adam was able to reign down the younger dragon better this time. The worst thing that happened was that Shiryu nearly had a small mental breakdown as he tried to decide which cake flavors he wanted for the slices. In the end, Adam was the one who decided for him.
The young dragon loved what he chose, and thanked Adam for choosing those for him. The older dragon simply rolled his eyes, and watched as Shiryu gobbled the cake slices, one by one.
"What about you, young man?" Steelum asked, causing Adam to look back at him. "Wouldn't you like some free samples as well?"
Adam looked at him, and he was about to refuse, but then he thought about it and said:
"Sure, why not?"
So, the first of the samples that Adam got was a piece of dragon fruit cake. He took a bite, and chewed on it.
"This one is really good." The disguised dragon said, and Steelum seemed satisfied with this. It was obvious that he was happy for having someone admiring his sweets. He probably thought that Adam was just another client, one who had real knowledge about cake other than knowing how sweet it was.
Adam decided to have a little fun with him.
"I can notice that you moistened the batter twice. You used horse... no, donkey milk, didn't you?" Adam asked, and Steelum blinked at him. "You used some mixture of vanilla and dragon fruit essence. And this layer in here, is of dragon fruit jelly with actual dragon fruit pieces. This added some good freshness. I noticed that you also added some little bit of lemon juice, to break the sweetness and brings some extra freshness to the cake as a whole."
Steelum looked at him with surprise for a few moments, and a smile played on his muzzle.
"Well, you understand something about baking, don't you?" The dark-grey dragon asked, and Adam smiled back at him.
"Adam makes cakes too!" Shiryu said, he finished the cakes, and had some crumbles of batter and frosting all over his muzzle.
"Really?" Steelum said, looking at him.
"What, think a guy like me cannot be a baker?" Adam asked at him, smirking.
"Well, I assume you can." Steelum said, looking at the young dragon. "So, would you like another free sample?"
Adam looked at him for a few moments, and pointed at a bluish-purple cupcake.
"What about that one? Looks good."
Steelum reached out for it, and handled it to Adam.
"What do you tell me about it?"
He said, offering it to Adam. The dragon took it and took a bite. He chewed slowly and deliberately, and then, after a few seconds, he said:
"Blueberry, obviously. The batter is tint from some weak blueberry and raspberry essence. The center is of blueberry jam with a few drops of passionfruit essence. You also added something on the batter... Small pieces of crystallized sugar. A nice touch."
Steelum nodded. Now it was Adam's turn to make a move, and he pointed at the fanciest cake he could see.
"Now, I'd like a slice of that one."
His request was grant, and he was give a slice of the white cake batter with its fancy white frosting.
One bite. Slow chewing. Tongue dancing around the mouth, as he tasted all the slice had to offer. He swallowed, and then, he was saying:
"White chocolate with lime and cardamom. Some Macadamia nuts in the batter. Two layers of pastry between the layers of batter, one of lemon with orange juice, and the other of pure white chocolate with saffron. There is also... something else. Something you used on the batter. Subtle. Fruity. Slightly sweet, but with a bitter undertone. It breaks the sweetness in just the right way. Is it... passion fruit? No. The sweetness is subtler, and the bitterness is more intense. It seems..."
Another bite. Slow chewing. He was feeling the taste. He was trying to put his claw on it. He tasted it before. That was when it hit him.
"Reaya fruit juice." Adam said, looking at the older dragon. "You used it to moist the batter, probably during the middle of the baking process. You took it off the oven and let the juice be absorb by the batter before returning it to the oven and letting it finish baking.
Steelum only looked back at him.
"Amazing." He said, looking at the younger dragon. "You truly have a lot of talent, young dragon. Say, where did you learn so much about baking?"
Oh, I learned it as part of my disguise to be a good assassin.
"My parents made me take baking lessons when I was younger." Adam said, looking at the older dragon. "They said it could widen 'widen my horizons' or something like that. Thought it was just going to be another annoying thing for me to learn and never use. Didn't expected to like it."
Steelum looked at the younger dragon.
"Well, and you still take lessons?"
Adam looked down.
"Had to drop it. Family problems. Kinda got solved, but now I have a tight schedule, I was lucky I could get some time to come to this part of the city. Still bake on my free time, but... wish I could get some more classes. Maybe learn a few new things."
"Well, you already know a lot, in my opinion." Steelum said, looking at him. "But, if you really want to try and learn more, and if you got some time on your schedule, come to visit again." He said, and Adam looked back at him.
"Yeah, I'll think about it."
With this, Shiryu and Adam were leaving the store. Shiryu still looked like he wanted to try and lunging at the cakes on that isle. Before they left, Steelum gave them some futuristic boxes. Each one was translucent, allowing to see the miniature cakes inside of them.
"Little courtesy for you two. On the house." Steelum said, and Shiryu went on and hugged the older dragon's leg. Adam simply thanked, and soon, he and Shiryu were leaving the store.
"What is wrong with you two!?" The huge minotaur screamed as he looked down on the two young dragons.
Spyro and Cynder were trying to find Adam and Shiryu after they ran from the problem of the telecom booth. They nearly got lost again, and ended up in a street filled with stores of games and electronics in general. In a longshot, they entered one of the stores, hoping to find the other two in there.
In a series of events, they ended up trying some "telepathic interfaces" for some games, and they somehow managed to overload three consoles, causing them to burst into flames.
"We are very sorry, sir!" Spyro said to the owner of the store. "We never used a telepathic interface before!"
"If you didn't knew how to use it, then you should have taken it off!" The minotaur shouted back at the two, who cowered; "You should not use a telepathic interface if you don't know how to! If you cannot order your thoughts while using it, it will send conflicting messages to the console and possibly cause an overload! You should have stopped after you fried the first one!"
They both stepped back as the minotaur towered over them. Cynder still had the telepathic link device on her head. It was like some form of helmet/tiara, which had some nodes that fit on her head as she placed it, one on her forehead, one on the back of her head, and one on each of her temples.
"I-I was just seeing if I could learn how to use it..."
"This is not a school!" The minotaur screamed back. "If you don't know how something works, then don't touch it! If anything, you could have talked to an employee and they would have appointed you for some training version of the telepathic interface! One that teaches four-year-olds how to use it!"
"Hey! Don't scream at her!" Spyro said, immediately stepping on Cynder's behalf, with caused the minotaur to turn to him.
"Why not!? She is the cause of this! She is the one who is too stupid to use the telepathic link!"
"I am not stupid!" Cynder shot back. "Those things are really hard to use! I mean, I just pressed this button and tried thinking like they told." Cynder said, pressing the same button once again. Immediately, the entire thing, nodes included, started to glow on a greenish-blue light. Instantly after, a few objects nearby activated.
The minotaur's eyes widened.
"No! Turn it off!" He said, and Cynder got startle by his reaction. Her startling caused the interface on her head to glow brighter, and it caused the objects nearby to react. Soon, the five dragon-shaped, fully mobile drones, flapped their wings and flew, all of them going straight the minotaur, and starting to claw and bite at him.
The bull-like bipedal creature cried out, as he was attack by the small robots, while Cynder and Spyro looked with wide eyes.
After a few moments, they shared another look, and then rushed out of the store. Cynder pulled the thing out of her head and tossed it back into the store as they ran. Just a few seconds after they rushed out of the store, the minotaur was soon coming out of the store, a gash on the side of his face from the claws of one of the dragon drones.
"YOU BRATS!" He bellowed as he started charging, chasing after them.
Spyro and Cynder rushed, and they passed by many other creatures on their way, startled by the rushing young dragons, which were soon followed by a raging minotaur.
Eventually, they caught sight of Adam and Shiryu as the two came out of the bakery. They notice the two incoming dragons.
"Hey guys!" Shiryu said.
"Ran!" Spyro said, as they both rushed past the two, and while they were confused for a few moments, they realized what they meant when they saw the red-eyed minotaur rushing in their direction.
Now all of the four dragons were running (or floating, in Shiryu's case), while the minotaur continued to rush after them. Eventually, the dragons finally took it to the sky and started to fly away, leaving behind a bellowing, furious minotaur, waving his fists and shouting curses at them as they moved away.
After a while of flying, it was finally safe for them to return to the ground. They were far from that street and from that minotaur.
"Wow... he was so vicious." Spyro said, as he and Cynder both breathed heavily now that they were in the ground once more.
"Minotaurs usually are, when you push their buttons." Adam said, looking at the two dragons. "Just what you two did to piss him off?"
Spyro and Cynder looked down, and diverged the talk from this as they wondered just where they would go next.
As they were just deciding:
"I said leave me alone!"
The female voice made them turn to look at whom it was. They saw that it was coming from a yellow dragoness with baby-blue underbelly and wing membrane and slender horns and lightning bolt-shaped tailblade. She was looking at a black dragon who was looking back at her, and she seemed to be mad at him.
"Elektra!" The black dragon said, "I just want to talk!"
"There is nothing to talk!" the dragoness, Elektra, said to the black dragon. "I told you many times that it is over!"
"Babe, please!"
"Just leave me alone!"
"Please, it was so hard finding you!" The black dragon said, reaching out and taking her paw on his own. "I had to go on all of your favorite places!"
"What?"
A certain attention was being call to the two dragons, including of the four disguised dragons.
"What is that?" Spyro asked, to which Adam replied coldly:
"Something that is none of our business."
"I checked on your workplace, on that medic you've been going, on that park you visited yesterday..." The black dragon said, and the yellow dragoness stared at him.
"What... You've been following me?"
"Why you don't want to talk to me, Elektra?" The black dragon asked, and looked at her for a few seconds, before his face hardened. "It is that ice dragon isn't it? The one who's been chatting with you when you go to have lunch at that restaurant. I've seen the way he looks at you."
"You are following me!" The dragoness exclaimed in indignation. "You creep!" She tried to free her paw from his grip, but he was holding it firmly.
"Elektra. Elektra!" He said, now holding her paw with both of his'. "Elektra, I just want to talk and solve things between us, but you are ruining everything!"
"You are hurting me!" She said, still trying to pull her paw from his grip. "Someone call the police!"
"Dammit! Elektra!" The black dragon said, his lips curling in a snarl as he still tried to hold her. That was enough for someone to decide to step in.
"Hey!" Spyro said, as he approached, Cynder and Shiryu following right behind. "Leave her alone!"
The black dragon looked over, and saw those three young dragons coming in his direction.
"You stay out of this." He said, "This is a talk between adults."
"Really? It doesn't seems like a 'talk'." Cynder said, and the yellow dragoness finally pulled herself free from the black dragon's grip.
"Elektra!" The black dragon said, starting to go in her direction, but was stopped as Shiryu suddenly floated in front of him.
"Kanojo o hanatte oite!" Shiryu said.
"What?"
"She doesn't' want to talk you!" Shiryu said, this time in the same language. "When a lady doesn't want to talk, you must respect her wish and leave her alone! You can't force her to talk to you! And you can't grab her and hurt her! Only ignorant savages act like that!"
The black dragon looked at the young eastern dragon, his face morphing into fury.
"Who are you calling ignorant, you little!?" The black dragon said, raising his paw as if he was ready to strike at Shiryu. However, before he could, something flew and hit him right in the shoulder. The black dragon cried out in pain and stumbled back, holding his shoulder in pain, before he looked at what had hit him.
Adam was still carrying the boxes from the bakery, and he calmly put them down as he looked at the black dragon dead in the eye.
"Try touching him again and I'll kill you." Adam said in a very cold tone, which sent shivers down the spines of both Spyro and Cynder.
The black dragon, however, seemed unimpressed, and very mad.
"You brat!" He said, charging at the younger dragon with a swipe of his paw. Adam easily dodged it and punched right in the joint of the older dragon, causing him to cry out and stumble in pain. The older dragon tried again by trying to bite at him, to which Adam answered by punching him on the temple before the jaws could connect, and it caused the dragon to once more reel back, holding the side of his head in pain.
It continued like that for a few minutes, with the adult trying to attack, only for the teenager to push him back easily, making him recoil in pain. All the while, it attracted a crowd that watched the scene develop.
"Wow, that young lad is good."
"First time I've seen an adult getting his tail kicked by teenager."
"Seriously, that boy is my son's age."
The black dragon started to lose his temper. He looked back at Adam with hatred, while the other dragon looked back at him with nothing more than boredom.
"You little brat..." The black dragon snarled, looking back at him. "You think you can play with the big guys? Oh, you stupid little brat!"
Adam flinched a bit as he heard that.
Those words...
You stupid little brat. You know nothing of the world.
"You think you are so cool, don't you?" The black dragon said. "You are not! You are just a little shit!"
You think you can follow a ridiculous dream like that? You think you can just turn your back on our plans? You little shit...
Adam's body tensed, his eyes narrowing as his lips curled in a snarl.
"Well, you wanted to play with the big boys." The black dragon said. "So, I'm gonna show you how the big boys play!"
With this said, he charged at Adam. Elemental shadows enveloped his paw as he thrust it in direction to Adam. The other dragon remained motionless, and then...
The movement was so fast and sudden that few actually noticed it. Something flew and then landed on the ground with a heavy thud. Some looked, and they had looks of horror as they saw what it was.
The black dragon blinked, confused at first. Then he looked at his paw. He was confused for not seeing it there, and even more when he saw that his leg was also not in there. It had flew off when Adam made the movement. The disguised purple dragon now looked with indifference, his paw was raised and he looked like he was ready to strike, or like he had just striked, as it seemed to be the case.
After a few more seconds, the events registered into the mind of the black dragon.
"M-my leg... My leg..." He said, slowly raising his other paw to hold at the stump of his severed leg, before slumping into the ground. Adam looked at him, calmly lowering his paw walking away. The crowd as one started to get agitated as they realized what had happened. Adam seemed like he couldn't care less.
"What did you do!?" Cynder said, looking at him as he once more joined the other dragons. Adam simply said:
"Let's go. Now."
That was all he needed to say, as the other dragons soon were following Adam, Shiryu now carrying the boxes. As they left, the crowd still surrounded the black dragon whom, by now, had started to scream out in pain and distress.
"My leg! My leg! HE CUT OFF MY LEG! AHHHHHHH!"
The crowd really started to panic, and some among them are already calling for both the medics and the cops, while the black dragon continued to scream for his lost limb. Meanwhile, the four dragons left unnoticed by everyone.
Well, by nearly everyone. Someone among the crowd is looking at the departing dragon who sliced the black dragon's leg clean off, apparently with his bare claws (an impressive feat), and he notices the two dragons that are walking by his side.
He sees them. Takes a good look at their features as they both turn their heads to look at the scene they are leaving behind. Sees the horns on their heads and their tailblades.
He sees this, and then something occurs him.
Could it be?