Dragon conjurer 2, p.14
Dragon Conjurer 2, page 14
“You have a sister?” I asked. “Here?”
“Yes, we’re twins,” he explained with a smile. “We might not quite understand how magic works, but we know twin siblings will always develop magic together. My sister, Ronin, has a similar power to mine, although she uses hers to manifest samurai weapons and armor. I think she got the better end of the deal, even though I can fly.”
“That’s all pretty badass,” Nick admitted as we resumed our journey to the Headmistress. “I can teleport between plants, and I’m a master marksman. Unrelated to the plant thing, though.”
“I have control over the earth,” Nala added and clenched her hands into fists. “I can manipulate anything derived from the ground, and I’ve been working on using vibrations in the earth to sense movement. Dylan’s been helping us get better.”
“You guys already had that potential,” I scoffed as a blush started to creep up my neck. I didn’t want to take credit for their progress, even though I liked having a little bit of an ego boost every now and then.
Finally, we made it to the Headmistress’ office doors. They were unlike Burkhard’s, since they slid open on tracks instead of swung open, and the barrier between the hall and office was made up of traditional Japanese screens. Through the thin paper, I could see a vaguely human shape moving around the office, but I couldn’t make out anything else.
“Don’t worry,” Phoenix said as he pulled the doors open for us. “I’ll be right behind you.”
We stepped into the cozy office, which was another difference from Burkhard’s space. Where his office was huge, tall, and sparsely decorated, this room was the exact opposite. The desk at one end was made of a dark wood, but it was only half the size of Burkhard’s, and it looked almost half as heavy. The desk also had some paper weights and even a small bonsai tree on one corner.
The rest of the room was painted a creamy beige color, and the walls were expertly decorated with artwork, a taxidermy yokai head, and another painting of a samurai fighting a horde of demons. The polished floors echoed our footsteps, so we couldn’t sneak up on the woman behind the desk.
She was probably in her mid-fifties, although it was hard to tell since she had very few wrinkles on her olive-toned face. Her deep, dark eyes regarded the three of us with a mature judgement, and her small hands clasped together in front of her torso. The stern woman was clothed in a black pant suit, and her long, silky black hair was pulled back with a series of clips.
“Welcome to MAJK, cadets,” she said in a deep, heavily accented voice. “I am the Headmistress, and I am pleased to see you have arrived unharmed.”
“Thank you,” I said with a slight bow. “We’re glad to be here. I’m Dylan Cooper, and these are my teammates.”
“My name is Nick Walters,” the nymph said as he copied my bow and placed his hand over his stomach. “Thank you for allowing us to come here.”
“And I’m Nala Jefferson, ma’am,” the dark beauty added and ducked low. “We’re looking forward to being here.”
“Once again, I want to thank you for coming all the way here on a good faith mission.” The Headmistress motioned to the chairs in front of her desk. “Please, take your seats.”
The four of us slipped into chairs, with Phoenix on one end and Nick on the other.
“Don’t be nervous,” I breathed as I slipped my hand into Nala’s. “We can do this.”
“With the increase in monster activity,” the stern woman continued, “and the arrival of two Conjurers, we believed it was time to open up our borders to outsiders in the hopes of cooperation among Academies. Since we were established, the Academies have always been on… less than friendly terms, but we must not forget the real enemy we face.”
“Monsters,” I said and squared my shoulders. “We don’t know where they come from, so we have to fight to make sure we stop them.”
“You’re very right, Mr. Cooper.” The Headmistress smiled at me, although her teeth were never visible from behind her thin lips. “Given the state of the world, I feel it is important we learn how to collaborate so we may protect the world from the monsters we face on a daily basis. One way I believe we can foster that collaboration is by assigning two teammates to you in order to help build cooperation among the cadets.”
“Headmistress, if I may,” Phoenix spoke up while he ducked his head, “might I ask who will be assigned to help fill out the team?”
“I have decided you and Ronin will be a good match for them.” The stern woman folded her hands on the top of her smooth desk. “I will make that announcement at assembly later, but there is no reason why the four of you cannot know now. I would advise you, Phoenix, to tell your sister before then. I don’t want her to be blindsided by my decision.”
“Yes, Headmistress.” Our guide bowed his head again and folded his hands into his lap.
“Phoenix will show the three of you to your dorm,” the Headmistress continued, “and then we will meet in our lunchroom to introduce the three of you to MAJK.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “If I may ask one question.”
“Go ahead,” she said with a nod.
“I just wanted to know what other information you had about dragons.” I picked my head up and gave Nala’s hand another squeeze. “AIMM couldn’t tell me anything, and maybe I was wrong for assuming you would know anything about them, but I just wanted to know.”
“I’m afraid we don’t know as much as we wished.” The woman across the desk sat down and folded her hands across the smooth top in front of her. “What I can tell you is this: dragons do not occur in this world naturally. We have never seen a dragon away from a Conjurer, so we have reason to believe dragons have to be summoned from an alternate dimension.”
“Alternate dimension?” I repeated as I leaned back in my seat. “Are you sure about that?”
“It’s our only theory at the moment.” The Headmistress squared her shoulders and picked her chin up. “With you here, perhaps we may be allowed to study you and your dragons in action, so we might learn more about them.”
“If it helps, I’m open to it.” I nodded my head and relaxed just a little. At least I had a lead on where these beasts under my skin came from.
“Very good,” she said and smiled. “Now, Phoenix, take these three to the dorm. Their things have been moved, and they will be sharing a room with you and your sister. I will call assembly in half an hour, and I expect you to arrive on time.”
“Yes, Headmistress,” Phoenix said as he got up and bowed to her. “I will do as you ask.”
“Thank you for hosting us,” I said and ducked my head to her. “We’re excited to be here.”
After Nick and Nala bowed to the Headmistress, Phoenix led us out the door and back down the hall to the elevator.
“I think you’re going to like my sister,” our guide said as we loaded onto the elevator and headed down. “She doesn’t say much, but she is hard-working and determined.”
“What was her power again?” Nick asked as he leaned against the wall behind him. “Something like yours, right?”
“Yes, she has spectral magic like I do.” The Japanese dude’s arms started to glow, and then an astral fire appeared across his skin.
I held my hand in front of the flames to see if they’d burn, but I didn’t feel anything except a deep warmth in my palm.
“I can control how much heat it puts off,” Phoenix explained as the fire dissipated. “Don’t worry, I never flame hot enough around my team to cause burns.”
Then we stepped off the elevator and into a hallway that looked very much like the dorm halls back at AIMM. There were doors on either side of the hall, and each door was marked with a golden character I couldn’t read.
We walked down the hall until we reached what I assumed to be Phoenix’s dorm, but before our guide could open it, the door beside it opened, and a short Japanese girl walked out.
She was about Nala’s height, but her body was even curvier than the dark beauty’s next to me. The new girl’s long hair was braided and wrapped around her head like a crown, and her smooth face was dusted with the most adorable freckles I’d ever seen. Her sharp facial features balanced out the childish freckles, and her ebony eyes gazed into mine like she was trying to see into my soul. She wore what I assumed to be the school’s uniform, since Phoenix was wearing a similar body suit, but hers hugged her waist and bust in all the right places.
She was so beautiful, I almost pinched myself to wake up.
Then she started to speak in Japanese, and Phoenix answered in the same language.
“She just asked who we were,” Nala whispered to me before the others stopped talking.
“I am sorry,” the new girl said and bowed to us. “I am Ronin. My brother tells me that we will be working together.”
“Yeah, we are,” I said just as the door behind her swung open again, and this time, the person who came out wasn’t nearly as attractive.
He was big, and not just big by Japanese standards, but huge. He stood about four inches taller than me, and his rippling arm muscles clenched as soon as we made eye contact. This human Godzilla narrowed his black eyes and folded his arms over his uniformed chest.
“Who do you think you are, talking to her?” he asked and squared his shoulders. “You think you can walk in here like that and disrespect me, the Dragon?”
The Dragon? Who the fuck did this guy think he was?
Chapter Ten
“Umm, excuse me?” I raised an eyebrow at the douche. “We’re just trying to have a conversation here. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m sure you Americans aren’t used to this concept, but we have something here in Japan,” the fuck-tard in front of me scoffed as he narrowed his eyes at me and bumped his shoulder against Ronin’s. “It’s called ‘arrangement,’ and Ronin and I are--”
“Please, Dragon,” Phoenix said as he walked up to the hulking giant and poked him in the chest. “Ronin and I are going to be on the Americans’ team, and you’re not, so…”
“Who do you think you are?” The big guy puffed out his chest and put his meaty hands on his hips. “Do you think your astral fire stands any chance against my real flame breath?”
Flame breath? That sounded cool, but still very, very scary. This guy was like the Japanese version of Bruce, but way bigger and badder.
“Listen, I don’t want to cause trouble,” I said as I held up both my hands. “We were sent here by our Academy to help build relationships between AIMM and MAJK, and--”
“Shut up, foreigner,” Dragon growled. “Just why did your Academy send you?”
“Because he’s the only male Dragon Conjurer in existence,” Nick blurted out before I could stop him. “That’s right, he’s got real dragons.”
“Conjurer?” The big bully dropped his arms and gaped at me.
For a moment, I didn’t think he looked so scary, but I didn’t think that would last very long.
Like I figured, the bully snapped out of his amazement and resumed glowering at me.
“That doesn’t matter,” he scoffed and put his arm over Ronin’s shoulders. “You haven’t proven anything yet.”
“Well, I’ve been here all of a half-hour, so…” I trailed off and looked back at my team. “We also helped stop a Tengu flying around in your air space, sooooo you’re welcome.”
“Phoenix brought that monster in.” Dragon frowned and jabbed his finger at my chest. “What did you do to stop it?”
“Froze it out of the sky with his ice dragon,” Nala piped up and folded her arms under her shapely bust. “What did you do to help?”
“I-I wasn’t around!” he spluttered and backed away from Ronin by a little bit. “I had something important to do. Phoenix only responded because he was already waiting for your team to arrive.”
“Whatever excuse you need,” Phoenix muttered behind us and opened his dorm room’s door. “Nick, Dylan, come along with me. Nala, I’ll show you how our rooms connect.”
While the bully resumed spouting excuses outside, the four of us headed into the dorm room to get away from him.
I paused in the doorway and locked eyes with the Asian beauty, just to make sure she was okay if we left her out there with the screaming maniac next to her.
Her onyx-colored eyes hardened like obsidian, and her plump lips thinned into a determined line. She didn’t say a word to me, but the look on her face assured me she could handle herself.
It didn’t mean I was totally at ease with leaving her out there alone, though.
“What about Ronin?” I asked as Phoenix flipped the lights on. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Oh, she’ll be perfectly fine,” her brother assured me. “Dragon’s been trying to pull that ‘we’re destined to be together’ garbage for a long time. But anyway, welcome to your temporary home!”
The room was twice the size of our dorms back at AIMM, and so much more tranquil. The window was covered with a paper screen, the walls were painted with a warm beige tone that reminded me of how my coffee looked after I poured all the cream and sugar into it, and the wooden floors were smooth under my feet, even when I shuffled across them to one of the three beds around the room.
Each bed was the size of a twin mattress, but they were covered with thick, mocha-colored comforters and matching pillows. There was one in each corner of the room, except for the corner to my left, where instead of a bed, there was a dark, wooden desk with a matching chair on wheels.
“Don’t worry,” Phoenix spoke up as he walked to the only rumpled bed in the room. “We have privacy screens if you’d prefer not to see anyone else while you sleep.”
He then demonstrated what he meant by pulling the screens out of the wall beside his bed and snapping it around the mattress until he was out of sight.
“They’re not soundproof,” he commented while he pushed the screen back into place, “but at least no one will spy on you while you’re asleep.”
“We don’t have any privacy in America,” Nick joked as he claimed the bed parallel to the desk. “Dylan can just lay there and stare at me all night.”
“But I don’t,” I butted in and plopped down onto the last bed in the room. “Why would I do that? Seems like a waste of time, because you don’t wake up in the middle of the night.”
“That’s also true, unless my bladder is about to burst wide open.” The nymph grinned at our new roommate and leaned back on his hands. “So, what about Nala? She going to stay in the other room with Ronin?”
“Yes, she will,” the other new member of our team said as she came into the room. “I can take her to the room now. Dragon left.”
“How did you get rid of him?” Phoenix asked as he approached his sister and laid a hand on her shoulder. “I know he isn’t the type to give up.”
“He went to talk with Headmistress.” The Asian beauty brushed her brother’s fingers off and turned to Nala. “Come with me so you can get settled in.”
“See you boys later,” the dark beauty said and stood on her toes to kiss my cheek before she and Ronin left the room.
“So, do you guys have a common area?” Nick asked while he crossed his legs on the bed. “Like a shared living space and whatnot?”
“Yes, we do,” Phoenix answered before he motioned toward the bags piled beside the desk. “There are your things. Feel free to unpack and put them into the chests at the foot of the beds. When you’re ready, you can step into the bathroom and change into your temporary uniforms.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” I murmured more to myself as I opened my bag and started to place my folded clothes into the chest. “So, how do the ranks work here? You mentioned something about the Named, so I guess that means there are Unnamed?”
“You’re absolutely right.” Our new roommate sat down on his bed and folded his legs underneath himself like every kung fu master in every movie ever. “When we are first brought to MAJK, we are told to stop using our birth names, and we are given a number rank to replace that. Usually, the number is a combination of our dorm room number as well as the number rank. For example, our dorm room number and letter combination is 5-D, while the girls’ room is 5-E. So, when Ronin and I first arrived, we were 5-D 1 and 5-E 1, until we finally ranked high enough to earn our Names.”
“Did MAJK pick those names for you?” Nick questioned. “Is it kind of like a superhero codename?”
“Yes, it is.” The astral-powered dude squinted his jet-black eyes and shrugged his shoulders. “We have some say in the names MAJK picks for us, but the Headmistress is usually adamant in having the final say.”
“Makes sense,” I commented and lifted one shoulder. “AIMM lets us keep our names, but we’re ranked by color and number now.”
“Yeah, before Dyl came along, everything was ranked by color,” Nick explained, “where we’d go from Blue to Red. Usually, people would arrive at AIMM and be ranked with Blue or Green, then after a few years, they’d earn a Yellow or Orange rank. Dylan was our first and only Red, so our Headmaster, Mr. Burkhard, changed the ranking system up a little bit. Now, we have to go from a color rank and a number rank. The color is shown by the stripes on our uniform, and the number is shown by how many stripes we have.”
“Nala, Nick, and I are all first ranks in our colors,” I added and pointed to the single stripe on my uniform. “Nick and Nala were just promoted in color, so they went from Green and Yellow to Yellow and Orange, and they’ll have to work for a little while longer before they get their next number rank.”
“Same for you, though,” Nick butted in and jabbed a finger at the crimson streak down my arm. “You’ll be Red 2 before we know it, and then you’ll start breaking records all over again.”
“Is there anyone close to the Red rank?” Phoenix asked while I leaned over and started to rummage through the chest at the end of my bed.
“One guy, but he’s still only an Orange 3.” Nick shuddered. “His name is Bruce Olsen, and he’s an absolute bully.”
“Like Dragon?” Our new teammate jerked his thumb toward the door. “Kind of like him?”
