Dragon Conjurer, page 24
“Oh, I’m definitely attracted to you,” I assured her with a bobbleheaded nod. “But… I mean… Steffi and--”
“What about her?” Nala purred and traced her finger over my arm.
“I mean, we’re kind of… dating right now, so does that bother you?” I cocked my head to one side and stared deep into her ebony eyes.
“No, it doesn’t bother me at all.” She blinked and then pressed her forehead against my shoulder. “I don’t mind sharing you with Steffi. She’s sexy, too.”
“Okay, that’s pretty hot,” I chuckled and glanced over at the pink-haired beauty across the jet.
Steffi gave me a thumbs up and a smile, but I doubt she could hear what Nala was saying over the sound of the jet engines.
“You’re a fantastically powerful person, Dylan,” Nala continued and picked her head up to look at me. “I couldn’t imagine anyone else as our leader.”
“Wait, leader?” I sat up a little straighter and shook my head. “Why me?”
“Who else could it be?” She sat up and looked me straight in the eye, and I felt like she could see right through me with her ebony stare. “Nick’s a Green, and AIMM would never let him lead. He’s also really immature and childish.”
“Hey!” Nick shouted from across the jet. “I heard that! I’ve got magic elf ears!”
“Fine, we’ll use the headsets,” I said as Nala and I pulled the devices over our heads and swapped the channel over to a more private frequency. “What about Steffi? She’s been here the longest, and she’s smart and brave. Why not her?”
“She doesn’t want to lead,” the dark-haired beauty snorted and grinned. “I don’t know why, but I feel like she doesn’t want to have any responsibility for other people. I know she cares about the team, but I think she wants to be a part of it and not the head of it.”
“So, what about you?” I cocked my head and turned one side of my mouth into a frown. “Why wouldn’t you want to take the leader’s place?”
“I like where I am.” The petite woman raised her hands up and pressed one to my chest, and then she laid the other on her own perky bust. “I know I have the experience and the power to be a good leader, but I don’t like making judgement calls. I tend to second guess myself a lot, and a leader should never do that.”
“So, that leaves me.” I rested my own hand over Nala’s and gripped her strong fingers tightly. “I’ve been here all of three days, and you already think I have what it takes to be a good leader?”
“I don’t just think it, Dylan.” Her dark irises hardened like a block of ebony, and her full lips thinned into a dangerously sharp smirk. “I know it. You have everything a good leader needs. Determination, grit, composure, and heart. I’ve seen it all, on each mission, in every fight. You don’t panic when the going gets tough, you get tougher, and I think you’ve got what it takes to be a great asset to us as a team and to AIMM. Don’t doubt yourself, okay?”
“If you think I can do it, then I believe you,” I chuckled as I closed my eyes again and rested my cheek on top of her soft hair. “I know the flight back home won’t take long, but I’m going to close my eyes for a second and recover after the fight. I need to figure out what the hell’s going on with this new dragon. I know Burkhard is going to ask.”
“That sounds like a great idea, Dylan,” the dark beauty yawned as she settled closer into my side. “I think I’ll follow suit. Don’t think too much, alright? That’s dangerous.”
“I won’t.” I smiled and kissed the top of her head one last time before the pair of us lapsed into silence.
Oh, boy, how was I going to explain a new dragon to Burkhard and the rest of AIMM? I was supposed to be the new guy who didn’t know anything about this shit, but I somehow managed to double my power in just a few days. Sure, I was a Red, and the only Red in the entire institution apparently, but I was still the new kid on the block, and I already had an enemy inside AIMM.
“If I come back with a dragon that bursts into flames and rolls out like a fucking Autobot,” I mumbled to myself as I turned my headset off so Nala wouldn’t hear me, “Bruce will lose his shit and try to kill me.”
Maybe he wouldn’t, though, because who in their right mind would challenge the guy with two awesome dragon pets? Bruce had cojones, that much was true, but I doubted even he would have the nerve to attack me while I was this powerful and he was not.
I could avoid Bruce and his minions until I knew more about my powers, but I didn’t know how that would be possible with Nick McBlabbermouth on my team. He was the one who got me into trouble with Bruce the last time, but I managed to beat the bully down without much problem. The only reason I didn’t want to fight Bruce was because it just took time out of my day I needed to train. It wasn’t fun for me to kick the shit out of Bruce, but I’d do it until the dude gave up.
Then again, what if it wasn’t Bruce who challenged me the next time? What if Johnny or the other two Oranges on his team tried to flex on me? I had no idea what any of their powers were, and if I didn’t have time to strategize, I might not do so well against them. I was exhausted, too, since I’d been sent out on three missions in just twenty-four hours. I needed to catch some sort of break.
So, I didn’t need to worry about Bruce and his cronies at the moment, but I still got nervous about the mission report to Burkhard. I didn’t want to wait to report to him this time, since I knew the headmaster would want to hear about what happened right away. He’d ask all of us a lot of questions, and I didn’t know if we’d have all the answers he was looking for. I could tell him about having another dragon, but I didn’t know how to explain where this one came from when I didn’t know how the dragons came into being in the first place. No one had explained anything to me yet, so how could I tell everyone else what was going on?
Before I could get lost in more worrying, the jet landed smooth and easy on the runway and taxied into the hangar.
“We’re here?” Nala murmured as she picked her head up off my shoulder and looked around the cabin. “That was fast.”
“Too fast,” I said to her as I took my headset off and set it on the back of the chair. “You alright?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” She waved her hand around and sat up. Her ebony eyes were glassy, but she still managed to smile at me in the cutest way possible. “Are you alright?”
“Other than freaking out about the mission report and new dragon stuff, I’m just peachy.” I wiped my hand down my face before I unbuckled and got out of the seat. “I guess there’s no reason to put it off any longer than we have to. Might as well report to Burkhard right away this time, even though I know we could all stand to be a little cleaner.”
“Don’t want to deal with the nerves?” Nala got to her feet next to me and wrapped her arm around my waist. “It’s okay, Dylan. I know you’ll be fine. We’ll be okay. All we have to do is tell him what happened and answer his questions to the best of our abilities. That’s all he expects, alright?”
“If you say so.” I swallowed and looked across the aisle at our other teammates as they got out of their seats. “You two all set?”
“Man, we’re ready for this,” Nick said as he cracked his knuckles and grinned at me. “What, you worried about something?”
“Yeah, a little.” I swiped the back of my hand across my forehead and looked around the cabin. “Sorry. I guess it’s easier to face Burkhard when I’m still on an adrenaline high.”
“Okay, so just remember we kicked some impish ass,” Nala said as she punched her fist into her open palm, and I started to think that was her signature move. “You’ll be fine! It’s not like we’re leaving you to fend for yourself against Burkhard. We’ll be in there with you.”
“Pipsqueak’s right.” The blond nymph smirked as he laid his forearm on top of Nala’s curly head like she was a post to lean against. “We’re not going to leave you behind with Burkhard. That’s cruel.”
“Not because he’s harsh,” Steffi added as the ramp lowered and the four of us walked down it. “He’s really not mean, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“Yeah,” Nick laughed. “He just looks like The Kingpin.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I chuckled while we hopped onto the shuttle and got ready to head to the leader’s bad-guy office. “I just don’t like feeling like I don’t know shit around him. That’s why I studied so hard in school.”
“So you could show up your professors?” the dark-haired beauty asked while the shuttle started rolling.
“Well, one of the reasons.” I crossed my arms and leaned back on my seat in an attempt to relax. “Actually, the day I was brought here, I showed a professor up in the middle of class. It felt really good.”
“Yeah?” Nick asked and shifted in the seat right in front of me. “Sounds like it would feel pretty good.”
“I knew you liked to be the smartest one in the room,” Steffi giggled as she reached over and wrapped her fingers around mine.
“Really?” I questioned and gave her hand a squeeze. “You could tell?”
“Oh, yeah.” She nodded, and the curls of her rosy-pink hair bounced with the motion. It was insane how her hair seemed to defy physics in order to bounce like that. “I could tell. There was something about the way you moved that tipped me off.”
“It’s called ‘swagger,’ girlfriend,” Nick laughed. “Dylan’s got it for dayyysss.”
“But you don’t think I’m a know-it-all, do you?” I cocked my head to one side and crossed one leg over the other.
“You’re not a know-it-all,” the fairy girl laughed and patted my arm with her free hand. “If you were a know-it-all, you’d never shut up. You know when to pick your moments. You’re a smart guy, and you know it, but you don’t act like you’re proud of it.”
“You’re way better than any other smart guy I’ve ever met,” Nala piped up and looked at me with rosy cheeks and a winning smile. “I’ve been around a bunch of them, and I even dated one in high school. Trust me, Dylan, you’re way smarter and cuter than any other ‘smart guy’ out there.”
“All good things,” Nick said as he turned his neck around to look at me. “That’s why you’ll be a great leader.”
“So, you’re all actually serious about this?” I asked as we got off the shuttle and left the hangar. “You three really want me to be your leader?”
“Yes!” Nala said as she nudged my shoulder with her own. “You’re, like, the perfect match to be our leader. We need someone like you calling the shots. We know you are new, but we trust you to lead us. Right, guys?”
“He knows he has my vote,” Steffi purred as she grabbed my hand and pushed herself against my side.
“And he’s got mine,” Nick added and bumped his elbow into my side. “Dylan Cooper: Red rank and team captain. Nice ring, right?”
“It does sound kind of nice,” I mumbled to myself as I put a hand on my chin and looked down at my feet. “I don’t see how I can turn the role down now.”
“Yes!” The green-eyed nymph dude punched me in the shoulder as we piled into the elevator. “We need to celebrate!”
“If we have time,” Steffi sighed while she pressed the button to Burkhard’s office’s floor. “There’s a lot of serious stuff going on, and I don’t know if we’ll have a chance to relax until after this is all figured out. Between what happened in Japan and California, I just don’t think we’re going to have much free time anymore.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” I murmured as the floors ticked by. “I don’t like what the imps said at all.”
“Neither do I,” Nala added and crossed her arms under her shapely breasts. “Something’s going on, and I don’t like not knowing what it is.”
“AIMM will figure it all out.” The fairy girl tossed her cotton candy hair away from her face and looked at the rest of us. “I’ve been here for years, and I’ve seen AIMM solve all the problems that came its way. This is no different.”
“But it’s still pretty serious, Steffi,” Nick said in a low, even voice. “We need to have our guards up for now. At least until we know what Burkhard and Dr. Hastings are going to want us to do.”
“You’re right.” The pink-haired girl looked down at her feet and slumped her shoulders a little. “I have faith, though.”
“So do I,” I added, stepped closer to Steffi, and put my arm over her shoulders. “The best we can do right now is keep working together until we’re the perfect team. I won’t stop until we’re there, and I hope the rest of you agree with me.”
“Of course, we agree,” Nala said as her ebony eyes fixed on me. “You know your shit, Dylan. We all see that. We want to work hard and become the very best.”
“Like no one ever was,” Nick added with a proud smirk and a sharp glint in his emerald eyes. “When you think about it, AIMM’s kind of like Pokémon. We’ve got to catch them all, right?”
“Oh, my god,” Steffi muttered as the doors swung open, and she hurried off the elevator like she couldn’t get away fast enough.
I thought seeing her so flustered was actually kind of cute.
The four of us piled out of the elevator and headed down the hall toward Burkhard’s office. No one was walking in the hallway with us, and the sounds of our footsteps echoed like we were in an abandoned cave or something. Of course, the cave would be pretty well-lit if it looked like this, but it still didn’t keep me from thinking about the hallway being like a cave tunnel.
When we reached the ornate doors, Nick rapped his fist against it four times before he cracked it open and stuck his head inside. “Headmaster Burkhard? We just got back from the wildfires, and we think we should talk.”
“Please, come in,” the headmaster’s smooth voice said through the gap between the doors. “I’ve been anticipating your return. I hope everything went well on the mission.”
“It did, sir,” Nala said as the doors swung all the way open, and we walked inside. “As well as it could’ve gone, given the circumstances.”
“They were fire imps, then?” The burly man behind the desk motioned toward the four chairs still sitting in front of him, like they’d been there since we’d left the night before.
Come to think about it, Burkhard looked like he was wearing the same suit from yesterday, and I wondered if the man even slept.
“Yes, sir,” Steffi answered as she took the seat furthest to the left. “About a dozen of them, and they were causing us a lot of trouble.”
“Nothing new for imps.” Burkhard waited until all four of us had taken our seats, and then he slid into his chair behind his desk. “I expected they’d be hard to locate even with Dr. Hastings’ work to triangulate their whereabouts. I trust the four of you encountered no trouble, though?”
“Steffi and I went after them,” Nick explained as he crossed his legs and shrugged. “Dylan and Nala stayed behind until we could find the little devils, and when we found them, Steffi kept them busy while I went back for the others.”
“Had they been starting new fires when you found them?” The headmaster steepled his fingers in front of his face and fixed each of us with a hard but even stare.
“Yes, sir,” Steffi answered with a nod of her cotton candy head. “We actually had to drop into the forest because there was no safe place for Silva to land. It was pretty bad by the time we got there, and I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be for the firefighters to put the fire out now that it’s raging so hard.”
“That’s not your concern, Ms. Foster,” Burkhard said and pointed his fingers at her. “So, you and the team dropped in, then you and Mr. Walters went in search of the imps while Mr. Cooper and Ms. Jefferson stayed behind? What did they do?”
“We tried to minimize some of the fire damage,” Nala spoke up before I could. “Don’t worry, sir, we were careful about how we did it. We didn’t want to leave evidence for the marshals to find, so I used my abilities to kick up dirt and smother the fire, and Dylan… well, I’ll let him tell you what he did.”
“I commanded Ky to use his frost breath and extinguish the flames,” I continued as Nala turned and looked at me. “Don’t worry, sir. Like Nala said, we were careful about leaving no evidence behind. But we were standing around doing nothing, so it felt like a waste not to use our powers to help.”
“I understand, Mr. Cooper,” the headmaster said as he scooted his chair closer to his desk. “You wanted to be useful while you were waiting, and that is admirable. What happened after you found the imps?”
“Like Nick said, I distracted the monsters while he ran back to get the others, and when they arrived, we focused our efforts on teamwork while Dylan actually called the shots.” Steffi turned away from Burkhard and back to me, and then she smiled. “He’s a pretty fantastic leader.”
“I knew he would be,” the Kingpin lookalike said as he nodded and grinned. “I could sense that about him from the moment he walked into my office. So, Mr. Cooper, what happened next?”
“I, uhhhhh, sort of stood on the edge of the fight and gave commands, but then I thought about how I needed to be more useful.” I pulled on the collar of my shirt a little bit, but not enough to show the edge of the tattoo I now bore on my chest, since I wanted to save it for the dramatic reveal. “Soooooo… I conjured a new dragon.”
“You conjured a new dragon?” Burkhard repeated and leaned closer toward me, even though the desk blocked him from being too close. “Did I hear you correctly, young man?”
“You sure did, boss,” Nick laughed as he pointed a single bony finger at me. “This guy went and conjured up a whole other dragon just because he could. Isn’t that amazing?”
“It certainly is.” The headmaster smiled so big, the wrinkles around his smooth face doubled. “May I see the new dragon, Mr. Cooper?”
“Sure.” I stood and pulled the hem of my shirt up to my chin to show off the spiraling Chinese dragon across my chest. “I think he’s pretty badass.”
“My word.” Our boss got out of his seat, walked around the desk, and stood in front of me.
