Chapter 8

A Man's Treasure

Sombra had been meditating on the couch when the trio got home, which surprised them all. Lena had been caught up on Emily's disappearance, and the love spell, and decided to sleep on it since she hadn't apparently slept at all the previous night. Fareeha and Angela waited on the couch for Sombra to tell them what was going on.

"I gave Hana a potion. It connects us mentally for four hours." She said slowly as if focusing her mind's eye and speaking at the same time was quite hard.

"Meaning?" Angela asked.

Sombra didn't reply, and both girls decided to wait by taking the breakfast they'd been robbed of by Lena's magic-induced condition.

They both came back to the couch with a mug of coffee in hand. Angela sipped on the boiling liquid before she asked:

"Did you find her?"

Gabe's voice echoed around the room:

"Can you shut up? She needs to focus!"

Angela huffed and directed her attention on her coffee. Fareeha wanted to turn on the TV, but wasn't sure whether it would bother Sombra or not. They waited in that awkward silent for quite a while, until Angela was done drinking her coffee and looked at the clock.

"Well, I'll go to work then. I'm already late but it doesn't matter. Call me when she's done meditating."

She stood up and went to the entrance hall to put her shoes and coat on. Fareeha hesitated between staying or also going to class, but she wanted to stay here in case either Lena or Sombra needed anything.

Angela had been gone for a handful of minutes when Sombra spoke once again:

"Hana's up. Look around."

While Fareeha first thought she was the one who should look around, she quickly realized Sombra was speaking to Hana.

"Four, five, six, seven... and you nine. Everyone's here. Good. Can I leave you to it? Alright, see you on the flip side."

Sombra opened her eyes and quickly stood up, stretching her arms over her head and making her shoulders and back pop.

"Hana is with all of the other girls in an underground cave. Just as I feared, they've been kidnapped by dragons."

"Dragons? How can a dragon kidnap a girl without anyone noticing?" Fareeha declared, astound.

"Dragons are shape-shifters. They are clever and very dangerous. Think Kitsune foxes but four times bigger and spitting fires."

Fareeha nodded.

"Right. So what do we do?"

"We call a dragon expert."

Sombra took her phone out of her pocket and quickly dialed a number.

"Jesse? I've got a dragon situation for you."

Since Jesse wouldn't arrive until the early evening, they all decided to wait. Fareeha went to her afternoon classes, while Sombra and Lena slept through most of the day. Once Angela was warned that there was a dragon on the lose, she promised she would stop by the pharmacy to buy a cream against burns on her way home. However, Fareeha knew the blond had completely forgotten that promise when she didn't come home by six, meaning she was probably still in the lab, and would probably work through most of the night.

Jesse came knocking at their door right before seven. Lena was finally fully awake and ready to get Emily back from a dragon. She almost felt like a knight, getting ready to slay a beast to save a beautiful princess. Fareeha had to remind her that she really wasn't a knight since she wouldn't be doing any of the fightings. At best, she was a squire. This hadn't been enough to break Lena's spirit. Fareeha had been nervously seating the couch, the TV playing in front of her discarded quite a while ago. She could feel in her guts that something wrong was going to happen, but she didn't know what. Sombra had been polishing her weapons and cleaning her gun after she'd mapped out every potential place for a dragon's lair to be.

Jesse arrived just as ready to kick scaled asses as the girls. He'd strapped a crossbow to his back, with a quiver attached to his belt, and a second revolver rested against his chest.

"Hi there, heard you needed a dragon expert?" he said as Lena came to open the door, leaning against the door-frame.

"Don't be so arrogant," Sombra said as she pushed him out of the way to exit the house. "I just need more people because I used my apprentice as bait."

Jesse chuckled.

"Must have brought back memories, hey?"

She glared at him.

"Don't you dare."

Lena and Fareeha followed the siblings outside, and Fareeha locked the door.

"So, is everyone ready?"

"No, we need to get Angela."

They all climbed into Jesse's car and the hunter turned on the ignition.

"So first stop, the campus."

The drive to the campus was relatively short, but with every passing yard they crossed Fareeha could feel the nervousness in the pit of her stomach grow. She felt, unconsciously at least, that she knew what would happen, but she didn't want to believe it.

Jesse parked in the almost empty parking, and instantly Fareeha noticed Angela's car, still parked there. She sighed, almost relieved. Angela hadn't left campus, she knew.

"I'll go get her," she said as she unfastened her seatbelt and opened the car door.

Fareeha quickly trotted away. She needed to know Angela was alright, that the moment she would push open the lab's door she would find her at her desk. Yet with every step, she took her anxiousness only grew.

She climbed up the stairs, but stopped midway through. She frowned, and hummed the air. After living in the same house as Angela for five months she'd picked up on her sent, and knew it by heart. And Angela had walked through there, she knew. She inhaled deeply, and almost coughed. There was something else amidst the blond's smell, and it made her sneeze. Sulfur, or cannon powder, something acrid which had left a trail in the air. She followed both smells carefully until she reached the front door. In her hurry to make sure Angela was alright she had missed the trail she'd left behind. She pushed the doors open, and Angela's smelled weakened, and the acrid smell grew stronger. She walked carefully until she found she couldn't smell Angela anymore, only sulfur. She felt her blood boiling in her entire body as if she were about to transform. She had to take a deep breath to calm herself, and fisted her hands. She walked back to the car, tense as an elastic band, just on the verge of breaking.

Jesse and Sombra had been bickering about where to go first to check for a lair while Lena had been on her phone, texting Emily to tell her they were going to save her from the dragon. They all looked up from what they were doing when Fareeha almost broke the door open, and shut it strongly behind her. She angry fastened her seatbelt, and Lena sidled away from her friend, who was radiating anger.

"Hum... where's Angela?" the Brit dared to ask.

"The dragon got to her first. Now it's time to get her back."

Jesse smirked.

"That's what I'm talking about! Onward!"

They drove restlessly and carelessly, Jesse jumping a few red lights and stop signs. Under normal conditions, Fareeha would have been angry about it, but she was too focused on trying not to turn inside the car to even notice. Angela was in danger, and she was going to save her. Meanwhile, Lena decided to keep her eyes on the road, only warily glancing at Fareeha for a few seconds.

The parked in the middle of nowhere, just outside town. There were only fields as far as the eyes could see. They all exited the car, as Jesse began to explain:

"Now, in my condition as dragon expert, I can tell you dragons like already formed caves, yes, but most of them are inaccessible from the surface. So they'll dig the entrance, preferably somewhere abandoned so no one will notice it."

He pointed to the small ruin half a mile away from them. It must have been quite a comfortable house, half a century ago. Now, it was only a ruin, with a sunken roof, broken windows and a crumbled wall. Fareeha huffed.

"I smell sulfur. It's here."

Jesse smirked at Sombra.

"See, what did I tell you!"

"Yeah, unless you've actually stumbled on another dragon lair that wasn't the one we were looking for. I seem to recall you're good at that."

They approached the house under the light of the full moon, and the beam of the flashlight they'd given to Lena. The small group passed through the broken stone wall, only to arrive in what used to a living room, with a broken down chimney and a rotten parquet floor, threatening to break under their combined weight.

"And here I thought dragons liked mountains of gold and dwarvish mines..." Lena shivered as the beam of her flashlight passed over a particularly large cobweb.

"They do like gold, only they hide it in inconspicuous places," Jesse explained. "If you want money you go to a bank, not the ruins of an old farmhouse, or the cellar of a crack-house."

They carefully passed over the broken down and rotten door, but stopped before they could go too far into the kitchen. They all stared down a giant hole which had obviously been dug up recently. Sombra took a glowstick from her belt and cracked it. It began to glow blue, and she threw it down the hole. The glowstick hit the walls of the hole multiple times before touching the ground, only small dot of light in the middle of the abyss. Jesse seemed to think longly.

"That's a sixty feet drop, almost straight down."

He seemed to think about how they could go down, while Sombra crossed her arms and sighed.

"Are you going to go fetch the rope, or do you want to jump first?"

He grimaced.

"Alright, I'll be right back."

Jesse ran back to the car, his spurs clicking against the wooden floor with every step he took. He picked up his longest rope from the trunk of the car and ran back to the house.

"How do you want to do it?" he asked.

Sombra had already figured out which beam of the roof was strong enough to hold the rope without making the rest of the house collapsing.

"This one. Tie the rope there."

Jesse, being the tallest of the group, walked carefully around the hole and tied the rope where Sombra had shown him. He then threw the rest of the rope down the hole, and looked at Sombra.

"Ladies first."

She smirked.

"Go ahead, then."

Fareeha groaned:

"We don't have time for that."

She took the rope and let herself slide down as quickly as she could without burning her hands. Sombra followed, then Lena, who placed the flashlight in her jacket pocket, and finally Jesse. Once the four of them had reached the stone bottom of the hole Lena turned the flashlight one once again.

"Alright, what now?" she asked, looking over at the dragon expert.

"As you can see we've reached a naturally formed cave. Dragons usually choose the larger side, obviously."

Jesse picked up the glowstick and threw it ahead of them. It flew through the small room, hitting a stalactite and falling to the ground. Lena followed the stick with her flashlight, and the beam only fell on more stalactites and stalagmites, all placed too close to each other to actually walk through the room.

"Well, other way it is."

They all turned around, and began to make their way through the cave.

They walked in a line, the rock formations around them not leaving enough space for them to pass more than one at a time. While Lena had the flashlight, they had agreed leaving her in front was a bad idea. So she'd been illuminating their path from behind Jesse. Behind Lena, Fareeha was fulminating, ready to jump the bloody lizard as soon as she would see one of its scales. Sombra walked last, glancing behind every few seconds, in case her idiot of a brother had been wrong once again.

While Lena had been jumping at every small sound she'd thought she'd heard, she almost tripped and fell when Jesse stopped moving completely. The beam of the light, instead of hitting some rocks on the side, had suddenly lost itself in a large room, which seemed to have been cleaned up from any kind of rocks. Very slowly, Jesse took his crossbow from behind his back, and picked up an arrow from his quiver. He armed his weapon, and scratched the head of the arrow against the closest stone, setting it on fire. He quickly fired it, and the small ball of light rushed through the room until it hit hard scales.

Lena recognized the sounds of a dragon moving almost instantly. Deep throaty sounds echoing around the walls, as if the giant lizard was just waking up. Heavy feet supporting a heavy body as the monster stood up. Scales sliding against the wet rocks of the cave. The next logical step, she knew, would be to hear the sparks of its flames, before it was too late, just like in the movies. Instead, as she fearfully raised the beam of her flashlight, she illuminated not one, but three heads, one green, and two blues. Their teeth were long and sharp, each tooth the length of Lena's hand. Long golden mustaches, and the same colored fur around their faces. Long golden horns mixing with the fur. And red, angry looking eyes.

Lena stepped back, almost falling on her butt, while the three others rushed to combat.

"Good news everyone! This is an eastern dragon, it doesn't spit fire!" Jesse yelled as he fended off against the green head, using his crossbow to block its teeth.

"What's the bad news?" Lena asked with a quivering voice.

She never received an answer, however. Both hunters were too focused on doing their jobs, while Fareeha had already turned and was assaulting one of the blue head with her claws.

Lena felt kind of useless where she stood, only lighting the show while the others fought off the dragon. Now that the shock of first coming face to face with a dragon had kind of worn off, and since she didn't seem to attract their attention, she began to feel rather bored. Not that she wasn't afraid for her friends, but she knew they would turn up okay, as usual. She continued to move her light around, wondering whether the girls were hidden behind the dragon, when she suddenly noticed something and frowned, bringing her light back behind the massive heads. It wasn't a single dragon. It was two dragons, which, in insight should have been obvious since there were a green head and two blue ones.

"Hey guys! There are two dragons."

Only Jesse seemed to be listening. He focused for a second to where Lena was pointing the light, and did notice not only that there indeed were two dragons, but that the scales on their sides were decorated with a cloud-like pattern. The green head took that time of distraction to push Jesse aside, and straight onto Sombra, who'd been having her lot of trouble with keeping her head's fangs away from her. As the siblings stumbled onto each other, Fareeha, who had climbed onto the other blue head, was thrown off and landed on the green one, planting her sharp claws through its scales.

Jesse quickly got up and screamed:

"Hanzo, is that you?"

All combat seemed to cease suddenly. The blue heads stopped to try and bite them, while Fareeha was thrown off the green one, whose attention then shifted to the blue ones.

"It's me, Jesse! Oh man, how long has it been? Eight years?"

"Jesse?"

Both blue heads spoke at once, their voices deep.

"Brother, who's this hunter?" the green one asked.

"He's... hum..."

The blue dragon seemed embarrassed. Sombra stood up and looked at the massive dragon and her brother.

"Is that your ex?" she asked.

She could have sworn Jesse was blushing, but the relative darkness prevented her from being sure. The green dragon suddenly exploded in laughter, a childish and high pitched laugh which only seemed to annoy his brother.

"This is the guy you used to date?"

There was a sudden banging sound, and the green dragon disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving only an old teenager in its stead, with green hair and a boyish smile.

"Oh man, this is just too good!"

"Genji, stop that!"

With another bang and twice as much smoke, the blue dragon disappeared as well, leaving behind a man about Jesse's age, with long black hair held in a bun, an undercut, a piercing passing through the bridge of his nose and a few rings along the shell of his ears. But most importantly, when he came to meet them, everyone realized that Jesse was at least a head taller than him.

Their reunion was awkward, to say the least. With so many people around them, including their own siblings, neither of them really knew what to say. Finally, Hanzo managed a:

"You look good."

To which Jesse replied:

"Yeah, you do too."

It was Fareeha, back to human and clearing her throat, who brought everyone back.

"We're here to find a few kidnapped girls, remember?"

"Oh right..." Jesse let out.

Hanzo sighed.

"I want to apologize on my brother behalf. It was his idea to kidnap them."

"I'm not kidnapping them, I'm protecting them!" Genji insisted.

Fareeha glared at him, but couldn't really add anything before the young dragon explained:

"I was not about to let these girls be attacked."

Sombra frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there was a shadow following them, so I tried to protect them."

Hanzo crossed his arms.

"As I explained to him, he could have protected them without kidnapping them."

"I'm helping others, Hanzo, what have you done lately, besides digging a hole?" Genji complained.

Hanzo sighed. Jesse explained:

"Well, anyway, as long as you didn't harm them, there shouldn't be any problem. We'll just set them free, and as long as you promise not to take any other girls it should be fine."

"Of course I didn't harm them!" Genji declared, offended. "We were having tea!" he sighed. "I should go and warn them the party is over."

The younger dragon trotted deeper into the cave, and the others followed, walking carefully as Lena moved the beam of her flashlight around the room.

"What happened?" Jesse asked. "Last I heard you were in Japan."

"We had to leave. The clan wasn't happy with Genji. It was exile or death. I just didn't want to leave him on his own. He's just a kid, you know."

Jesse nodded.

Hanzo lead them through a small tunnel to the side, and they emerged in what looked like an improvised Japanese living room. There was a kotatsu in the center, with small puffy pillows on the stone all around it. The light was given by a very impressive number of candles lit all around the room. When they arrived they found all the missing girls seated around the kotatsu, each with a teacup in front of them, Genji expressing his own sadness at seeing his new friends leaving.

"I know, I'll miss you too. But I'm sure you can come visit."

All the heads turned to the small group of rescuers. The instant Fareeha saw Angela, seating there like she'd really just been attended a tea party, a relieved smile spread on her lips. Angela also smiled, and she'd barely had the time to stand up that Fareeha was already throwing herself into her arms, hugging her as strongly as she could without hurting her.

"I was so scared I thought I'd lost you..." Fareeha murmured.

"I knew you'd come save me," Angela replied.

Jesse cleared his throat, and it was enough to bring the two girls back to reality. They quickly jerked apart, and avoided eye contact.

Hana got up and looked at Sombra with annoyance.

"You took your time! Thank god you got here though. We were about to go to bed but there aren't enough beds for everyone."

One of the other girls declared:

"I had proposed a poker to try and determine who would sleep on the ground but no one wanted to play!"

Sombra placed a hand on Hana's shoulder with a smirk on her lips.

"Good job, Hana. I promise next time if I need a bait I'll use Lena."

The Brit was about to reply that it was out of the question when Emily came to stand in front of her and nervously asked:

"Can I talk to you for a second?"

Lena nodded, and they walked away from the group. Emily was more nervous than Lena had ever seen her before, and the redhead gave one last glance to Genji, who nodded, before she began to speak:

"I'm so sorry for what I did to you in the last few days. I was scared, and it was really stupid of me, especially to let it run for so long. So I hope you can forgive me, and that we can still be friends?"

Lena smiled.

"You know, at least you didn't try to eat me. Plus I don't really remember what it was like when I was under the spell. Angela just told me I was annoying, so..." she shrugged. "But next time you have something to say, just say it."

"So we can still be friends?"

"'Course we are. I just need your help with something."

Emily, all too eager to make amend, nodded.

"Sure, anything."

"There's this very pretty girl I like. People say she bewitched me but I can't remember what it was like then. Maybe you can help me?"

Emily flushed, her cheeks and neck turning as bright red as her hair. She could feel her heart beating in her chest. She hoped she wasn't reading too much into it.

"What... what do you mean?"

"Are you free tomorrow afternoon?"

As the entire group made their way out of the hole, even the dragon brothers, Sombra couldn't help but think about that shadow Genji had said he had seen. Had someone been following them, or was it really a shadow, an apparition? She hadn't heard from the Witch since Mei's blizzard incident, and that only convinced her that she was the shadow.

A hand suddenly appeared on her shoulder, taking her out of her thoughts. She looked down at Hana, who had been waiting with her for everyone to climb out.

"So, about that thing you were supposed to give me."

"Hum, what?"

"You promised you'd give me something if I played bait. What is it?"

Sombra smirked, and placed her hand on Hana's shoulder.

"Be prepared, alright? Because it's an amazing thing that I don't give often, and I know you've wanted it for a while now..."

"Is it a knife? I bet it's a knife."

Very quickly, Sombra's hand from Hana's shoulder to her neck, and she leaned forward, bringing Hana toward her. She gave her a kiss, short but intense, leaving the shorter girl stunned for a few seconds as she pulled away. Hana blinked, while Sombra smirked and grabbed the rope, ready to climb up.

"How... what.." the younger girl let out.

"How do I know? Come on, conejita, what other reasons would there be for you to want to spend so much time with me?"

"I... How about I like the adventure!" Hana yelled after her as Sombra began to climb.

"That's not what your cheeks are saying!"

A/N: Hi guys! Just a quick heads-up for tomorrow, since I'll (hopefully) be spending the entire night watching the quarter and semi-finales of the Overwatch World Cup, I may post tomorrow's chapter later than usual. Or it will be full of mistakes because I'll be so tired that my brain won't fonction correctly! Anyway, I'll see you guys tomorrow!