Green Dragon’s Fire

Green Dragon’s Fire

Chapter 1: Rescue Mission

Sadoko listed as the `whoosh’ from the cars faded away, then came back again, then faded. As each car passed, her jet-black hair flapped wildly in the breeze. Her green eyes watched as the street lights turned on, casting their yellow, eerie glow on her tan skin. Beneath it all, a low pitched drone everywhere you went. Climbing down from the school window, Sadoko went and sought shelter near the outskirts of this city. Nobody would take her in. to everybody else, she was the typical hobo. Shunned by society. The city. Plenty of noise, as well as light. Never sleeping. She needed to crash elsewhere. Mingling in with the crowd, she headed north-west. This crowd consisted of mostly teens walking home from school. Upon seeing the teenagers, Sadoko recalled her time on the school window. Everything the teacher taught, she already knew. She hoped to learn something interesting, but no avail. Wondering why she already knew so much, Sadoko soon ran into a wall of sleek metal. “oooof”, Sadoko exclaimed as the air rushed out of her, “stupid building.” Looking up, she saw an air duct. Now that would be a nice place to stay. Using the adjacent building, she jumped of the wall, and punched open the air duct before landing in it. Looking around, she sought out the perfect place to sleep. Crawling around the vent, she found it. It was high above the ground, which meant that nobody would get her that easily if they spotted her, and it had a grate on the bottom so her spot would be aerated. Getting in the most comfortable position that was possible in a dusty air vent, sleep came to her in a giant, black wave that swallowed her whole.

“Tsk tsk tsk. After all this research, our chimera turns out as a failure.” “Dammit. The boss will be angry too. He funded so much on this project.” Awakened by all the commotion, Sadoko peered though her grate. Looking down, she saw three humans, all wearing lab coats, but what she really focused on was the bloody form on the middle of the table that the humans were surrounded around. It was weak, quickly losing blood. Its nose twitched. Does it smell me? Too weak to raise its head, it rolled its green eyes toward my direction. My sharp ears detected its sad, weak whimper. Then, something strange happened. “Please”, it said, “take me away from here. . .” It spoke. I shook my head. Was it a talking chimera? Or was I able to understand it? As these questions whirled around my head, I looked back at the chimera. Suddenly, a vision of a misfit like me appeared. Shunned by the people around it, and shunned by society. Disliked, and considered useless. With a mask, covering who it really was. The mask is all that the people see. The mask covers up the beauty inside. A sloshing sound awoke me, and snapped me out of my vision. Looking down through the grate, I saw one of the humans holding a syringe filled with poison. “It’ll die soon anyway. Might as well end its misery now because it won’t be of any use to us, being so weak.” I was enraged. Forced into a life it didn’t even want. Two animals, both minding their own business, then several surgeries later, they’re stuck together. Mixed into one being. Now, it gets an unexpected death. Then, taking a second look at the syringe, I remembered. I remembered a face, pale white, like the person had never been outside, like a living corpse. A face, topped with sleek, black hair, an evil grin, spreading from ear to ear at its captured prize. I remembered no more. All I was thinking was how these people were just like that living corpse. Cruelty. It boiled by blood, and everything went red. Then, I blacked out.

Chapter 2: Dream? or Memory?

When I snapped out, I was sprawled on the ground. I felt something poking my shoulder. Looking over at it, I saw something that chilled me to the bone. The syringe. It was sticking out right there, on my right shoulder. All the poison was already discharged. But what scared me the most was that the poison from the syringe wasn’t taking affect. I pulled it out with ease, realizing that it didn’t even penetrate, and I examined my shoulder. Then, I froze. My whole right arm, from shoulder to finger tip, was covered in green, shiny scales. The scales had protected the syringe from entering my arm, while the syringe had been wedged between two scales. As I got up, the scales disappeared, melding back into my skin, like they’ve never even been there in the first place. Looking around I found that all three humans were gone. All that was left were piles of ashes, but no smell of smoke in the air. Looking up, I found that the grate I was looking though was totally busted. Then, there was the chimera that cried for help. The bloody lump was barely breathing. Scoping it up in my arms, I stroked its blood matted fur, and just as I did, the wounds glowed only for a short enough moment for it to look like I imagined it, and just like that, the chimera was no longer hurt. Now I was able to get a good look at the animal. It resembled a mix of a gray fox, and a tiger. Just like there are clouded leopards, this one looked like how a clouded tiger would look. It had the body of a tiger, with the pelt of a gray foxes, and the strips of the tiger included in the pelt. It also had green eyes, which were my favorite color, and a bushy, gray tail. This chimera looked like it was only a child. It climbed up my arm and nestled upon my shoulder, curled up like a sleeping cat. Now that the chimera was healed, I decided to explore the building a bit, my instincts constantly urging me that my job here wasn’t done. I jumped back up, through the busted grate and into the air duct, careful to balance the creature on my shoulder. Instead of crawling toward the exit, I continued crawling away from the exit, the tunnels gradually getting darker and darker. The vent went on and on without reaching any rooms, and eventually the vent went pitch black, but I still kept on crawling. It seemed that no other rooms connected to the vent, and I wondered why the vent would extend so far, if it didn’t come to any rooms. Soon enough, after almost an hour of crawling, a faint light was seen ahead. Exhausted, I slumped down in the vent; the chimera curled up in my arms. The last thing in my sights was the faint pin-prick of light, which promised me adventure in the morning.