Castle watched the monsters' approach with disbelief. How the hell are we supposed to fight *that*? "Anyone got any ideas?"

In response, Castle heard the soft clicks of three safeties being removed from service weapons. 'General' Esposito took charge immediately. "Ryan and I will take the guy in the northeast, Beckett, you got the guy from the northwest?" When Beckett nodded her confirmation, Esposito concluded, "Okay, then Castle, you get the guy coming from downtown."

Castle's eyes widened in surprise. "You want *me* to take on one of those things by *myself*?"

Beckett replied with a sly smile and a quick kiss. "You're an all-powerful wizard, honey. I'm sure you'll think of something."

"I'm sure you'll think of something," Castle muttered under his breath. It wasn't long, though, before he had his inspiration.

The three cops almost immediately felt a change in their weight balance. Beckett reached behind her to discover a lightweight Japanese-style katana sheathed and strapped to her back. Looking at her friends, she quickly realized that Ryan and Esposito were also carrying similar weapons.

When Beckett turned her attention back to the giver of their unusual gifts, Castle smiled sheepishly in response. "In case you guys run out of bullets." The wizard then focused briefly on his girlfriend, grabbing Beckett by the wrist before she had a chance to take off after her prey. "Hey-be careful."

Beckett tried to let every ounce of love for Castle shine through in her voice. "Always." The cops then turned to take off after their prey and Castle turned to focus his attention on his own.

Beckett walked the bike path up Broadway, gun drawn, eyes tensely focused on her prey.

The dragon swooped down with incredible speed, giving her precious few opportunities to get a shot off.

Beckett pointed her gun at her target in the sky, aimed, and fired over and over again...then cursed in disappointment as every bullet that met its target barely seemed to make the beast do more than flinch.

The dragon circled around for another for another pass, letting out an ear-splitting roar before unleashing his own fiery counterattack.

Beckett fired as she ran, trying to use every one of her sensory gifts to send those bullets to points that she hoped would destroy her target once and for all.

It was no use. Between the dragon's thick scales, huge size and ability to respond quickly in flight, her bullets were no more of a threat than a bee sting would have been. Beckett just barely made it into the closest available doorway...a split second before the dragon's fiery breath rained down on the sidewalk just outside of that doorway.

Beckett turned around and quickly realized that she had sought shelter in a McDonald's. The dining room was full of people now looking at her wide-eyed and silent, paralyzed with shock and fear. "You probably don't want to go out there," she tried to joke nervously, "trust me."

A little girl broke away from her mother and made her way through the people standing in huddles between the cash registers and the door where Beckett stood. She came up and quietly tugged on the hem of Beckett's suit jacket. "Ma'am?"

Beckett looked down at the polite, brown-haired little girl. Poor kid can't be older than five or six...she must be scared out of her mind. The detective knelt down so she could get closer to looking the girl square in her startling blue eyes. "What is it?"

The girl's question was simple and direct. "Is that a dragon out there?"

A simple question deserves a simple answer. Beckett nodded. "Yes, sweetie, it is."

The girl seemed to be considering Beckett's answer carefully. She examined Beckett's weapons first. "Is that a gun?" When Beckett nodded, the girl continued, "I've never heard any stories where the dragon gets killed with a gun."

Beckett thought about how the weapon had fared in the battle to that point. "Yeah, me neither."

The girl then looked at the weapon strapped to Beckett's back. "Is that a sword?" Beckett nodded again. "I've heard lots of stories where the dragon gets killed with a sword."

"Yeah," Beckett agreed, piecing together a plan even as she tried to reassure the girl, "me too."

"But in those stories, it's always a boy who's killing the dragon." The girl then leaned in to speak to Beckett in a whisper, "and girls are better than boys anyway."

"I think so too," Beckett whispered back. She stood up and pulled the weapon out of its sheath. With a confidence she wasn't feeling, Beckett smiled as she asked the girl, "So what do you think?"

The girl looked at the weapon wide-eyed. "That's a cool sword. Can it kill the dragon?"

Beckett looked out the door, knowing she needed to go back out there and do her job. "I hope so," she muttered under her breath, "I sure hope so..."

Taking in a deep breath, Beckett gave the little girl one last wink and pushed herself back out the door. Keeping one eye on her high-flying prey at all times, she sprinted, sword in hand, across the street and behind the pillars of a nearby office building. Beckett peeked out from behind her cover. "C'mon, you overgrown lizard," she muttered, "come down here and *fight*."

Finally, Beckett's opportunity came. The dragon took two more flying passes at Broadway, seemingly determined to torch every abandoned car on the street, then landed in the courtyard of the office building. The beast sniffed at the pillars, as if making it clear that he was indeed looking specifically for *her*.

Beckett quietly put down her sword and took out her service revolver. In a blink she slipped out from behind her cover and two shots...which hit the dragon square in each eye. instantly blinded, the beast threw his head back, flinging fire at the tops of the surrounding skyscrapers with a terrible, deafening roar. Hoping that she wasn't about to get herself flambéed, Beckett dropped the gun and picked up her sword, sprinting toward her prey at top speed, holding the weapon in both hands...

...and gutted the beast from neck to navel. The dragon howled in agony, flames lighting up everything in the area as his head flailed around in violent death spasms. Beckett backed away from her prey, wanting to ensure its demise yet not wanting to get caught underneath it. Finally, the animal breathed its last and collapsed in the middle of Broadway.

Beckett sheathed her sword, then picked up her gun and holstered it. Taking one last look back at the McDonald's, she saw the little girl's face pressed up against the glass, beaming back at her with a trusting smile. It was that look that convinced Beckett that everything was going be okay.

The detective then took off running back toward Times Square.

Ryan and Esposito walked down the now-abandoned lanes of cars on Park Avenue, keeping their service revolvers drawn and eyes cautiously focused on the sky above them. "Bro, are you *sure* about this?" asked Esposito.

His partner tilted his head towards the billowing clouds of smoke rising up from what was left of Broadway. "Would you rather face a fire-breathing dragon *head on*? I mean, I know you don't get sunburned like I do, but..." Esposito tried to silence his partner with a wave of his hand, but Ryan had to get in the last word. "Unless you have a better idea?"

Esposito shook his head, annoyed but finally relenting. "I wish I did...but I don't."

"Then will you *please* focus on what we've gotta do here?"

Esposito nodded, turning his attention back to the skies...and not a second too soon. "We got incoming," he announced.

Ryan followed his partner's line of sight as the beast swooped down on them with the speed and size of an airborne, out-of-control eighteen wheeler. He tightened his grip on his weapon, saying one last quick prayer to any and all gods who might be listening in the hopes that his plan might work. He established a mind-link with his partner and started the countdown. One...two...

On three the two officers fired off as many rounds as they could, trying to reach any vulnerable spots in the dragon's soft underbelly.

The dragon roared by, setting every tree and flower on the median ablaze...and completely oblivious to every bullet fired in his direction. Ryan cursed through the mind link in frustration. Did we hit that thing at *all*?

We hit it all right, replied Esposito as he re-loaded his weapon, it just didn't make any difference.

We're never going to take him down when he's in the air, complained Ryan.

Esposito found inspiration in his partner's comment. We need to clip his wings.

Ryan's eyes widened in shock. And just how exactly do you propose we do *that*? It's not like either of us has an assault...his attempt at a tirade was cut off when Esposito holstered his gun and unsheathed the sword from his back. Mimicking his partner's motions, Ryan let out a small groan before switching back to the mind-link. I'm not going to like this, am I?

Standing on the roof of the Waldorf Astoria, Ryan knew he had been right. He didn't like this at *all*.

Esposito watched the dragon circle around for another approach, then looked down at ground level and went over the plan again in his mind. "We'll probably only get one shot at this, bro," he told his partner.

Ryan rolled his eyes at Esposito's statement of the obvious. "Ya think?" Nervously, Ryan then unsheathed his sword, holding it in both hands in a stance that mirrored his partner's. "Three, two, one, then we go, right?"

Esposito nodded, his eyes never leaving their prey as it headed toward their previous location. He took a few steps back to prepare for a running start. "Three...two...one...JUMP!"

Both men took leapt off the roof, holding their swords high overhead with both hands. Esposito's running start gave him just enough extra distance to match his partner as each man landed squarely on their intended targets: the dragon's large, leathery wings. Instantly both men drove their swords down into the skin underneath their feet. The great beast howled in pain, flapping his wings up and down in a panicked attempt to lose the two humans. Gravity worked in Ryan and Esposito's favor, though, as the swords cut deeper into the dragon's skin with every upward motion. The dragon's flight grew less controlled with each flap of the great beast's now shredded wings, with Ryan and Esposito hanging on to the ragged edges of each wing for dear life. Finally, the dragon crashed violently into the ground, barreling through burning cars and trees until he skidded to a stop in front of the MetLife building.

Ryan got up quickly from where he had rolled into his landing, shaken but otherwise uninjured. When he started to scan the area to find his partner's landing site, he was shaken by the howls of pain from the dragon next to him. Ryan sprinted back to the crash site, pulled his sword out from the wing, then climbed onto the back of the beast and ran up the length of the animal's spine until he reached its head. There, with one last great push, Ryan drove the sword through the dragon's skull, killing him instantly.

The detective nearly jumped off the dragon's back when he heard an odd noise behind him...only calming down when he realized the sound was a single man's hands clapping in applause. Ryan turned around to see his partner giving him a standing ovation. "Who'd have thought NYPD really stood for New York Police Dragonslayers?" joked Esposito. "Nicely done!"

"Hey, it was your plan," Ryan commented. His tone turned briefly serious as he then asked, "You doin' okay, man?"

Esposito nodded. "Not a scratch, far as I can tell. You, bro?"

"I'm good," Ryan replied as he jumped down from the dragon's carcass.

Esposito watched his partner even as he examined the aftermath of their victory. "Think Castle and Beckett had as much trouble as we did?"

Ryan's face drained of color as he realized their dangerous mistake. "Javi, we gotta get back and help Castle."

Esposito looked to his partner, confused. "What, bro, you think Castle can't handle taking down his dragon either?"

"No, that's just it," insisted Ryan. "He *can't* take down the dragon. Or the other wizard, or anything else. The legend said the wizard has no power over life or death."

Esposito's face paled as he finally caught on to Ryan's train of thought. "So no matter how much Castle beats up on the dragon it won't die?" When Ryan quietly nodded in agreement, Esposito grew even more determined and urgent. "We gotta get back to Times Square..."

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