Mina was not impressed that their first reaction on seeing her was to throw up. Even after Eijiro unwisely explained about them killing a naga in self-defense and eating it, she just rolled her eyes.

"That's what you're supposed to do, silly, it's wrong to waste meat," she said. "Though when a naga dies it's usually the family and friends which eat their body. You're probably talking about Shun Shun. He was such a stickler, didn't have many friends. Pretty sure his own mother died from his nagging. Don't dragons eat their dead too?"

" No! " wheezed Eijiro, though he didn't sound so certain. He'd probably never been around for a dragon funeral before he left to follow Katsuki.

"That's some messed up shit," said Katsuki, probably none too wisely. Mina wasn't exactly their friend yet.

As was shone on her face when her eyes flashed, she sniffed, and curled her fists on her hips.

"You know I could still kill you guys for tresspassing in my swamp and killing a three-hundred-year old tree."

All three boys froze, as though her gaze had turned them to stone.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Sorry," mumbled Katsuki.

Izuku elbowed him hard.

"Sorry for calling your funerals messed up."

" And I'm sorry for killing your tree," said Eijiro with many much droopy dragon head.

Mina actually smiled at him. "Oh, I'm not mad at you, sweetie, you would have died if they left you in the water all night. It's really your tamers fault for dragging you out here."

"Hey!"

"But he's probably never had to deal with water bigger than a puddle since you're obviously from the north. Everyone knows only fire dragons and loser humans live up there-"

"I'LL SHOW YOU LOSER HUMAN-urk!"

Izuku had shoved Katsuki's face into tree they still sat in, bending his friend uncomfortably in half like a piece of paper. Katsuki could hear his squinty eye grin towards MIna.

"You're totally right there, Mina, and we're so grateful for your understanding. Is there any chance you might know where the storm dragons are? Since you know where fire dragons were and such."

"Get off me, nerd!"

"Well…" Katsuki threw off Deku in time to see Mina put a pink, black-taloned finger to her equally pink chin. "I think we just know about our neighbors. Naga aren't much for traveling outside their territories, though I could always ask the elders for you. Some of them can talk to the trees."

"Like trees move much either-OW!"

"Shut up, Katsuki," hissed Izuku between his teeth.

" So you're not going to travel with us? " said Eijiro, complete with a short whine.

Everyone gave him funny looks.

"Why'd you think I was going to travel with you?" asked Mina, looking utterly confused.

"Yeah, where'd you get that idea?" asked Katsuki, who didn't appreciate not even being consulted on this.

"It's not like you could carry her too," said Izuku, eyeing Mina's none-too-small massive snake body.

"Oh, no, I can fly," she said dismissively.

"EH?!" went the other three.

With a cheeky smile that made Katsuki ache for the days she'd flash it before showing off, two draconic gray wings sprung from her back with speckled pink membrane.

"Naga are low-level shapeshifters," she said.

" So cool! " cried Eijiro, who sounded like all his dream had come true, and maybe they had.

"There's no way those puny wings could lift your big snake ass," said Katsuki.

"Oh my god, can you just shut up?" asked Izuku. "Don't listen to him, he's just chronicly rude."

"I picked up on that," she said with a frown, before grinning again and squeezing her black eyes shut.

There came a sound of lots of shifting water, kind of like a big slurrp, and before their eyes her long, python body began to suck into her torso. It was actually kind of nauseating to Katsuki.

In about a minute or two, Mina was standing in the tree with them on two pink human legs…and butt naked, outside of the feather and scale half-top she had over her breasts.

She held out her arms and grinned, breathing heavily. "Ta dah!"

Izuku and Eijiro squealed and covered their eyes. Katsuki just stared, having shorted out.

"What?" she looked down at herself. "Oh…yeah, that's usually covered by scales. But it's not like you haven't seen a naked girl before, yeah?"

Katsuki made something like a squawk in his throat.

Izuku scrambled about himself blindly, finely managing to find and unlatch his own green cloak around his shoulders.

"Here! Wear this. I'm sorry, but humans, uh, we don't look at the other gender when they're naked."

"Huh, that's weird." She took the cloak though. "How do you guys mate then? Do you just do it in the dark?"

"We, uh, we're naked then, but only then. It's, uh, kind of special."

Katsuki just made another throaty squawk.

"Then what's up with your dragon? Isn't he naked too?"

Eijiro flinched, but didn't lift his head.

"He's, uh," Izuku put a hand before his turned, strawberry-red face. "He's weird."

"Ha ha, totally. I mean, I've only met a few dragons, but damn!"

" Not cool, dude," Eijiro muttered to him.

Mina giggled, which somehow was the key to break Katsuki's brain back into functioning and he ducked his head into his lap like a child, neck and ears lava-hot with embarrassment.

He hadn't seen anything-well, okay, he had, but his brain had been so shocked it hadn't processed it.

"You know what? Traveling with you actually sounds pretty fun."

Eijiro snapped his head back up. " REALLY?! "

Fortunately, Mina had wrapped the cloak about her securely by then, but Eijiro still radiated sheepishness when she giggled again.

"I mean, I don't know why you'd want me to come, but seeing new places actually sounds fun. Of course, I got to check you over with the elders magic, just in case you really are just your average asshole humans trying to traffic naga or whatever."

"People actually do that?" asked Izuku.

" Humans actually do that," she said, suddenly serious. "No offense, but humans can do the suckiest things no other people would."

"Except fairies," muttered Katsuki.

"Fairies are mischievous, yes, but not downright evil."

"Pfft," but Katsuki didn't continue with that.

And since they all knew Eijiro would abandon them, hook line and sinker, if Mina didn't go with them, Katsuki and Izuku ended up riding Eijiro as he waded through the swamp after Mina's once more snake-like form. She told them she could only transform three times a day, but she had wanted to be sure she could protect them from any other naga that might be hanging around. Of course, they'd also applied liberal amounts of mud on themselves beforehand too. Sure enough, no mosquitos so much as looked at them. Both boys and dragon would have given anything to have known this the night before.

The elder she ended up dragging them in front of lived in a tree house that looked as though it had grown out of the very branches, moss, and vines itself and was definitely not big enough for a dragon, so Eijiro had to peer through a hole in the viney walls that passed for a window.

The elder naga's scales and hair had grayed with age and he was a deep, dusty marroon color, even his skin, like Mina. He also had black for the whites of his eyes and bright yellow irises like Mina.

"This is my grandpappy!" she crowed.

'Grandpappy' grunted, his frown deep enough to cut his face in two. He looked at Izuku and Katsuki as though they were fresh, steaming dog turds that had been dragged onto his freshly mopped kitchen floor.

"Do I want to know?" he asked.

"Oh hush, Pappy, they've already been eaten alive by the swamp. They didn't have any choice but to land here, their dragon was about to pass out! They were just passing over."

"Uh huh," he said, then sniffed. "I smell naga blood."

Mina finally looked uneasy. "Yeah, about that, remember Shun Shun?"

"Ugh."

"Yeah, they dropped in to sleep and he tried to kill the tamer just because he had fire magic. Unprovoked, whole nine yards-"

"That's what they say."

"Oh my gosh, I can tell when people lie too, you know! What's got your tail in a bunch?"

"My granddaughter just dragged two ugly humans into my house, what's to be happy for? Oh, and a fire dragon-burn anything and I'm skinning you alive," he shouted towards the eye in his window.

" I wasn't going to burn anything!" protested Eijrio.

"Whatever," the old naga sighed. "What do you want?" He looked at Izuku and Katsuki in turn, folding his maroon arms in expectation.

Izuku swallowed, but Katsuki knew that look. Whatever came out of his mouth, if anything came at all, would be a stuttering mess.

So Katsuki squared his shoulders and met the old man's eyes head on. "We're looking for the storm dragons. He's a tamer too." He nudged his head towards Izuku.

The naga looked at Izuku, who gave a wobbly smile, then shrugged.

"Beats me. Anything else?"

"Pappy," whined Mina. "Ask the trees?"

"Why the hell would they know? They can't walk."

Katsuki cackled, only to be elbowed again by Izuku. Damn, the nerd was worse than a naggy wife.

"But they gossip, don't they? Maybe they heard something from other trees."

"And why would trees be interested in dragons? It's all 'sun sun sun' and 'damn, there are too many birds in my hair to sleep.'"

Mina pouted. "Well, you're useless."

"Rude." The old man mirrored her pout, and in that moment Katsuki was able to see how the two were related outside of their coloring.

"Sorry for bringing you guys all the way here, I should have just gone myself," she turned and slithered into a doorway in the back of the room. "Where's your old bag, Pappy? The one with the snake embroidery."

"Why?"

"'Cause I'm going with them, silly, and a girl needs the essentials."

"Excuse me? Like hell you are, what about the swamp?"

"It's got you, doesn't it?"

"I'm old!"

"Oh, hush, you don't look a day over eighty."

"What am I going to tell your parents?"

"Why do they got to know anything? I'm a big girl, I can do what I want."

He huffed and finally turned away from the human turds to slide his torso back wherever Mina was digging around. "Girl, you're being stupid, you don't even know if you can trust these…" he glanced over his shoulder, wrinkled his nose, then slid into the back room completely where their conversation dropped to murmurs.

"Well, this is going great," said Izuku.

"This is all your fault," Katsuki said to the eye in the window.

" Yeah, it kinda is," said Eijiro, not sounding sorry at all.

"We could always come back to visit," said Izuku, whose voice went up a little when he spotted some bones that looked just the right size for human femurs dangling in the corner not far from their heads.

" What if we never come back?"

"Like hell we're staying out there! What, you think we'll die?"

" Well… "

"Don't finish that sentence, I don't care what you think. We'll give her a few more minutes and then we're out of here. I never want to see a fucking swamp again."

Izuku said nothing, which meant he agreed. He'd already scratched through half his mud cover.

Mina did come back, however, flashing her fangy, pearly whites and with a disgruntled grandfather watching from above his endless coils. She had a leather satchel decorated with dark green thread snakes along the hems over her shoulder and she'd once more reverted back to legs. This time, however, she wore worn leather pants, also with thread embroidery, that looked a few sizes too big but tied tightly about her hips.

"Alright, boys, let's do this."

"Just to make it clear, you're not the boss of this caravan," said Katsuki.

She snorted. "What, and you are?"

"Yes."

Izuku rolled his eyes. "Sure, Kaachan."

"Watch your tone, nerd!"

"I'm already regretting this," said the old naga.