~Chapter 2~
Jake heard the door to his room slowly creak as it opened. He ignored it and kept throwing the baseball against the ceiling with his tail.
"Hey, kid." Fu popped up beside his bed. Talking was allowed in the house now that his dad knew everything. "Everything alright?"
"Yeah. Just thinking," he sighed.
The dog smiled and wagged his tail. "Yeah, well, I would imagine that much. It's not every day the destruction of the world-"
"No...that's not it," he interrupted. "It's Rose. You told me to 'round her up' but I can't. She won't talk to me, won't even listen to me. I've sent her mail, texts, email, voicemail, phone calls, everything! She's ticked off at me right now."
"Well...uh...what did you do?" Fu asked.
Jake just continued bouncing the baseball against the ceiling. Maybe it was the steady beating that helped him to think. Sometimes he would simply let his mind drift off to wherever it wanted to go. Thoughts popped up and he began to contemplate them. In fact, he could easily spend hours mulling over everything. Maybe it was a sign that his future career was going to be a philosopher. Or maybe he was subconsciously trying to make sense of the world. Lately, though, his thoughts mainly included Rose. What could he have done so heinously wrong? Was it something he said, something he did? What was it? Girls...they were such strange creatures. No boy could ever hope to figure them out. Well, unless they were gay, but that wasn't really the point. He had spent how long trying to figure out what he'd done? He'd spent the same amount of time apologizing. It had to be like a hundred times he'd said he was sorry! ...Would a hundred and one work?
Thump...thump...thump...
It was weird. One day she just...snapped. She yelled at him so much he couldn't even remember half the things she said. She poked him in the chest a few times, threw her hands up in the air, did everything else to show her anger. Maybe he'd missed something she said, or maybe she said something and he'd misinterpreted it. Maybe she'd said something when he wasn't focusing and he said the wrong thing in response. But Rose was so nice, so forgiving... She used to be, anyway.
"Um...so, uh...yeah. Hey, I'll be at a local hotdog stand if you need me," Fu said, walking out the room.
Jake hardly noticed. He didn't know what to do anymore. It was as if right and wrong were simply blurred together. The fine line between them just...vanished. Just like that. Poof. If anything, he should be mad at her for ignoring him all this time. He was trying! He was trying hard to make it up to her! He was trying to fix this, and she wouldn't even acknowledge it! But he didn't want to be mad at her. Something in him wouldn't allow it. He didn't want to cut off all communications with her in hopes of making her call him. He was the boyfriend...maybe. Hopefully. He was supposed to call her, not the other way around.
Hadn't she already broken his heart enough though? She was always leaving, always disappearing. She went to China for heaven's sake! China! Then he had to get her to remember him again. It was all just so hard. Why did she have to make it so hard?
He caught the ball and gently set it on the nightstand that rested beside his bed. That stupid thumping was getting annoying anyway...
"Jake!" his mother called. "Dinner's ready!"
He got up with a soft groan. His tail popped back into its "normal" place. Apparently Grandpa hadn't told her about the whole end-of-the-world ordeal. Although to be truthful, it could actually turn out to be an end-of-the-world situation. If they couldn't stop the Dark Dragon this time...if the Dark Dragon had somehow managed to absorb the power of time as he traveled through it...maybe nothing would work. What if a thousand Roses couldn't stop him this time? And it wasn't even Rose who stopped him, it was the vortex itself. Now there was just...nothing.
There's a saying that says something like, "When all is lost, one shall rise." Or something like that anyway. Well, last time it took the combined power of all the world's dragons and a highly trained dragon-slaying professional to bring down the most powerful of all mythical creatures. And even with all that help, the Dark Dragon still wasn't truly "brought down". If nothing more, he'd only been trapped. He was breaking out of time's prison. If time itself couldn't hold him, what could?
"Jake!" his mother called, much louder this time.
"Coming!" he shouted back as he moved swiftly to his seat at the table.
As Haley tested her food to see if it was the right temperature, Jake noticed something different about tonight. He really should've been expecting to see abnormalities, being as the baddest of the bad was hellbent on world domination.
Grandpa was at the table. The expression on his face was grim despite his efforts to hide it. Jake assumed nobody else knew about this. In fact, he hadn't told Spud and Trixie. Not yet at least. If worst came to shove, those two might be needed, human or not.
"So," his dad started, "anything new? Did you spot any unicorns or such?"
Haley smiled, flashing her pearl-white teeth in the adorable manner she was renowned for. "Well, it would be nice to see one. So far so good though!" She turned to him, still smiling. "Right, Jake?"
Not knowing what to say or do, he nodded.
"Well, it's a shame. Never saw one before, but I heard they're beautiful," his dad continued.
Unaware.
"Oh, they are beautiful, Daddy! Just wait until you see one, maybe it'll let you ride it!" Haley giggled.
All of them.
"Well, pumpkin, I guess you'll have to teach me sometime."
They were all so blissfully unaware of the danger they were in. Maybe it was a good idea to keep quiet for now, but, as he saw in his grandfather's eyes, there was no way they could stay this happy for much longer. The secret was going to be revealed soon. Grandpa knew it, Fu knew it, Jake knew it... And to think, they were the only ones who knew about the Dark Dragon's reappearance. Well, other than the oracle twins. It was rare for Sarah to have a sad face, or even a serious one. When she told the local dragon, "amazingly" enough the American dragon, her face was just as glum as Cara's. And when he turned to Cara hoping to hear a good side to all this, she only shook her head.
There was no good side.
He'd pondered over that. If there was no good side, then what exactly was going to happen? Obviously it would be bad, but what kind of path would this whole thing go down? There were a million bad things that could happen, but only a certain number of them could take place. It would've been easier if he knew all the details, but Sarah only told him what she saw, and her vision wasn't very detailed. All she knew was that at the hill in Hong Kong, where her family was currently staying at Grandpa's insistence, the Dark Dragon would dig his way out.
Jake was young and fit, so naturally he was sent out to investigate that hill and see how much time they had. It was disappointing to know how unprepared they were.
"Jake, you okay over there?" His father's words came but they went in one ear and out the other.
Rose was the world to him. It was his duty as the American dragon to save the world. But his perspective of the world wasn't just of a planet. His world was sweet, warm, cute, funny, intelligent, loyal, caring...she was...everything. Like a rose with no thorns, one with the greatest quality of color, the softest of petals, and the utmost of joy that it brings to you when you receive it. He could never believe she was mean by nature, that was just impossible! Sure, she'd tried to chop him up a few times, but that was all in the past.
"I'm sorry, Jake, but us being together right now...it's just too dangerous."
She always used to say that. Even though it was true, he couldn't bear it. It used to be her main excuse to get away from him. Now the Huntsclan was eradicated, the Dark Dragon technically was still trapped in the vortex, and there were no major distractions. Nothing could be dangerous about being around Rose anymore. She used to be sweet as pie but now it was like someone added too much pepper to her recipe. Something...something went wrong. He messed up, and he messed up bigtime. All he had to do was find out why she was so furious with him, and fix it. Problem was...she wouldn't tell him. If he did something wrong, then he had no memory of it. But he still had to find some way of making things right again.
"C'mon," he murmured to himself. "You're the Am-drag, you can totally do this."
First, he needed to find out what was wrong, and it was clear Rose wasn't going to tell him up front. Assuming that was phase one of the patch-things-up plan, he needed a second phase. Once he found out what was wrong, what came next? Flowers and chocolate? Unlikely. Phase two would be the part where he cleverly devised a plan to get Rose off the dark side. He suspected that the hardest part was phase one, since the only one who could even hint at him what was up was Rose; and let's face it, she did not want to talk to him.
"Jake, are you alright?" Haley asked, probably about half worried.
He continued trying to think of a way to get Rose to give him at least one little clue, but for the sake of letting everyone know he wasn't in a talkative mood right now, he answered his little sister anyway.
"Yeah, just thinking," he mumbled.
"About what?" she asked.
"Just dragon stuff," he answered.
His grandfather looked at him in surprise, thinking he was going to tell the family about the Dark Dragon. He wasn't. Not until his grandfather was ready.
Now, back to Rose... He couldn't communicate with her from the outside world, and he couldn't go talking about...wait! That was it, that was it! It was so simple, right in front of his nose...sort of...all along! Rose was and had always been deeply rooted into the magical world, into the life of mythical creatures. Her family, however, wasn't and never had been. They didn't even know magical creatures existed. Thanks to that wish he made with the thirteenth Aztec skull, Rose, like him, was tied to normal family life and the complexities of the magical world. Oh wow, this would be easier than he thought. No more hard games to play, at long last! There was only one way to talk to Rose, and this was it.
In an instant he dashed from the table to open the window, leaving his untouched food and his dazed family behind. A wave of blue mist filled the air. The last thing they was the tip of a red tail smoothing over the windowsill. The last thing they heard was the spreading of bat-like wings, which by the way sounded oddly similar to a piece of paper flapping helplessly in the wind.
Jake found it fairly easy to locate Rose's apartment complex. The clouds were just dense enough to shroud him from human eyes, yet just thin enough for him to see the landscape below.
He flew up to Rose's window. Ironic, really. He ended up in the same place that he chose to leave. All he had to do was just sneak in through the window! And unlike his old bulky dragon form, his newer snakelike body allowed extreme agility and amazingly swift aerial maneuvers. It was also slimmer, meaning he could literally slip through the window frame. And what luck he had, it was even open! Rose was practically inviting him in!
He decided it was best if he clung the the side of the brick wall, that way he would be less noticeable. Plan A was now in action. He slowly climbed up the brick, still trying to make himself look as inconspicuous as possible. The brick wall provided for good enough traction for his claws to hang on to.
It felt like forever, even though it was only a few short seconds, but he made it to the window frame, reaching one hand out to grasp the ledge.
He paused when he heard, "How many times do I have to tell that girl to keep her window closed?"
He felt a sudden pain in his fingers and knew the window had just smashed his hand. He covered his mouth to muffle the scream. Tears were brought to his eyes as he tried to get a grip by repeatedly banging his free hand against the wall.
"Time for Plan B, time for Plan B!" he squeaked, just barely managing to pull his trapped hand out.