Odd Goes Romeo

Karen

A brand-new bright gold dragon flew into school and met up with Green-Gold. Every male dragon in the place, including Small Brown, Strong Bronze, and Kind Bronze, were drooling over her, but she immediately took a shine to Small Brown alone. Later in the day, all four friends tried to talk sense into Small Brown, but he just blew smoke in their faces and left. White didn't even try to talk to him, because she knew it would be hopeless.

I opened my eyes. "There's a new neon-gold dragon coming to school, Aelita." Neon was the only way I could describe the shade.

"Really? And is there anything we should know about her?" Aelita's really starting to get the hang of understanding my dragons.

I answered as I checked my most recent transformation. For some reason, only my feet and my shins had changed this time. "Well…she's going to have all three of our boys drooling over her. I think she's a friend of Sissi's, and our resident snob is trying to get her slot as the most popular girl back. Goldie will take an extreme liking to Odd, and he'll spend practically the whole day with her. You guys try to talk sense into him, but he doesn't listen."

She sighed. "Sounds like Odd."

Sure enough, there was a new girl in town. Her hair was the same intense gold as her dragon in my dream. And her name was…Brynja? I don't know, it was a hard one. She was from Iceland; Sissi's pen pal.

Every boy was falling head over heels trying to get her attention. In the cafeteria, every boy was doing something for her: letting her cut in line, pulling out a chair for her, filling her cup with water, one even carried her tray for her! I decided to be nice to Sissi and gave her a chair at my table. For some reason, I was sitting separate from the others today.

"I guess you weren't expecting this turn of events, were you Sissi?"

"No. This is the most irritating thing that's happened since Ulrich laughed in my face when I admitted my feelings to him!"

When Odd introduced her to us, I was polite as anything. I even smiled at her, which is rare even for my friends.

However, she only flirted with the boys and said nothing to us girls. Which was nothing more than what I'd expected. I seriously considered showing her my dragon-claws, but that would mean showing my friends, too. And currently, only Aelita and Jeremie knew about my...little problem.

I'm guessing that I still had the most-popular-girl status, but new people do get more attention simply because they're new. I wasn't worried.

I decided to stay out of the sense-knocking round, since I knew it wouldn't work. What I chose to do instead was go to sleep and find out what was happening the next day.

Odd

I took Brynja to the factory trying to explain what was so special about my friends. While I was in the factory talking, I heard some keys tapping. I looked, and she was at the supercomputer!

"Aah! No, don't touch anything!"

Nothing seemed to be wrong, so I led her away again.

Karen

Kind Bronze and Pink-Gold went to the factory to check the supercomputer, and they found a problem. Pink-Gold went in first, followed by Strong Bronze and Dark Gold. Small Brown came later and went in to finish the job. After the problem was solved, Small Brown was forgiven and Neon-Gold left the school.

I opened my eyes. "We're going to have some problems with the supercomputer and I choose not to virtualize. If I had to guess, Odd made a fatal mistake last night."

Aelita groaned as I studied my legs. The scales had spread up onto my hips overnight. Would I shed once I was fully dragon?

Aelita

I decided to be stupid and virtualized on my own to watch for activated towers. Why didn't I listen to Karen when she mentioned problems? I ended up fighting William all by myself.

I was about to be thrown to the Digital Sea when Ulrich and Yumi showed up.

Jeremie chose to tell us then that he couldn't bring us back until he fixed the computer.

Yumi was immediately sarcastic. "And you're telling us this now?"

Ulrich wasn't much better. "That's brilliant, Einstein, what's the bad news?"

William was a bit more…Karen's word would be "talky"…this time. "How could I ask for anything more? I get to kill three birds with one sword."

Ulrich retorted, "We'll see about that!"

"It's been seen to."

Odd

I watched Brynja swim for a little bit, but I couldn't stop thinking about my friends. Finally, I left for the factory.

Jeremie wasn't happy to see me, but I told him to virtualize me anyway.

I got there after Ulrich and Yumi were devirtualized, and Aelita was very happy to see me!

I asked William as I fired a laser arrow, "You think I'm scared of that popsicle stick?"

I did manage to destroy William, but he threw a smoke thing at Aelita that sent her off the edge of the sector! I jumped after her and fired an arrow to activate her wings, and she rescued me.

Back on Earth, my friends all told me that I was forgiven, and Jeremie decided not to launch a return trip for one simple reason: Brynja was leaving the school.

"Can you believe it? She didn't even say goodbye to me!"