She breathed shallowly. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she ordered her body to turn around and run for her life, but it refused service. All she could do was motionlessly stare up at that monstrosity that should only exist on a screen or the page of a book.

“Don’t come closer,” she whispered hoarsely as she heard footsteps approaching behind her. “Hide.”

The footsteps stopped and she could hear the three of them gasp and then hold their breath just like she had done.

“Move back slowly and hide,” she ordered them as quietly as she could, even though the drake alarm kept blaring through the city. Did it sound extra loud where they were or was that just because they had gone outside?

“Don’t just say it, do it yourself to-” Seren’s words got cut off by a low, inhuman growling coming from the drake’s barely opened mouth, although it had opened far enough for Hyrin to see the shimmering white row of razor sharp teeth. A trickle of slime ran down one of them and dripped onto the street, splashing apart as loudly as rain in a rainstorm.

Its growling was more than just a warning towards them. It seemed to ignite something inside it and they watched rooted to the ground as bright blue lines lit up from in between the oblong scales on its stomach, quickly running up its chest and neck, until a crackling, icy blue fire gathered in its mouth.

“Run…” Purely on willpower, Hyrin pushed her feet to shuffle backwards just a few steps. “Run!” She repeated and somehow, she managed to turn around and jump towards her new friends. She pressed her hands against Row and Seren’s chests, pushing them forward in order to kickstart their bodies as well, not that their legs could ever carry them fast or far away enough to evade the strangely cold heat she felt raging towards her back.

Maybe it was because she had managed to turn around in that last second that she was fast enough to stop pushing them forward and pull them down towards the ground instead, as a group of soldiers clad in black uniforms approached them. They didn’t even stop to look at them, though,they just jumped over them and ran ahead.

“Wha…” Lily grabbed Hyrin’s shoulder so as not to fall over as she stared up at the men and women running past them, their guns already pressed against their shoulders, aimed at the monster trying to fry them.

Five of them, heavy looking guys and women, carried shields that looked so suspiciously like the hide of that dragon that it made Hyrin shiver. They wordlessly formed a row at the front and planted their shields so firmly into the ground that they literally broke the asphalt.

“Incoming!” One of them yelled in a voice so loud that they heard it clearly even over the sound of the drake alarm.

As one, every single soldier lowered to the ground, crouching down the same way Hyrin and the other three had done. The five big guys kneeled behind their shields, holding them at a forty five degree angle as the dragon’s blue fire hit them.

It rolled over those shields like water, forming an enormous wave over all of them. It hit the buildings on both sides and landed on the street way behind them. The fire scorched the stone until it was black as cole before it covered it in a layer of ice.

“How…” Seren mumbled softly, staring up at the ice blinking in the afternoon sun.

“I… I think it’s best not to ask,” Row answered softly. He wrapped his hand around Hyrin’s wrist to take it off his chest. She had grabbed the fabric of his shirt when she had pulled them down and she hadn’t been able to let go. Row didn’t let go either, though, he just held her wrist in his hand as he kept his eyes on the soldiers in front of them.

She glanced up at him. Row had seemed so calm and upbeat from the moment she had met him, that she had automatically thought of him as the strongest, bravest of the three of them, despite what he had said to them at the hospital, but right now, she could feel how badly his hand trembled despite how tightly he had gripped her arm. Not that she could blame him. If her body hadn’t gone completely numb, she would probably be trembling like a leaf herself.

“Fire!”

The moment the dragon stopped spitting fire, the five front guys pulled their shields out of the ground and ran to the side, making room for the soldiers holding guns behind them. Each and every one of them ran towards the dragon, surrounding it in a half circle, and pulling the trigger so smoothly and easily as if they had done it a thousand times before.

Whatever they shot out of those heavy looking weapons weren’t normal bullets. They released from the guns with deafening blows and created cracks in the dragon’s enormous scales, sticking to them with shining steel hooks, after which they set off small explosions, about the size of a basketball. One of them would probably have barely even hurt the beast, but over thirty of them caused it to cry out in pain and stagger back as it swiped its long, spiked tail towards them.

They all jumped out of its path, although from the corner of her eye, Hyrin could see two of them get blown meters up into the sky, while another one got crushed under a piece of a building breaking off and falling down.

“Shit.” A voice she recognized cursed from right beside them and she snapped her head up to see captain Harumi stand next to them, leaning on a broad, heavy sword almost as tall as he was. “Solan, get them to the medics!” He ordered loudly. “Ley, open its chest!” 

He glanced down at Hyrin after he finished handing out orders and showed her a relaxed grin, although she noticed he was ever so slightly out of breath. “I thought you were brave enough to take on a drake all by yourself,” he said in a mocking voice. “What the hell are you doing cowering on the floor?”

She wasn’t sure why, but his words shot through her body like lightning and slowly, she regained some control over it. She let go of Seren’s shirt and carefully released her wrist from Row’s grip so she could stand up straight.

“That’s more like it,” Captain Harumi nodded. He wore the same tight black uniform as everyone, but parts of his were covered in small, pale pink scales. She saw no hooks or stitches so she wasn’t sure how they were attached to the fabric, but they covered his chest and shoulders and shins as if they were a part of his skin, following the lines of his muscles, neatly flowing along with even his smallest movements, never sticking out or showing even the slightest opening between them. She was pretty sure she could try to shoot him point blank and he would still just stand there showing her that same complacent grin.

“You like them?” He asked as he noticed her staring. “It took me three years to find scales from a sky class in this color, but it was worth the effort, don’t you think?” He leaned his shoulder towards her so she could inspect them closer.

“Sky class?” She asked as she raised her hand and held it out to him, as if to wordlessly ask if she could touch them.

He nodded and she cautiously brushed her fingers over them. They were cool to the touch, but rougher than she had expected them to feel. Not quite like sandpaper, more like a smooth surface that someone had run a needle over, filling it with straight scratches running from top to bottom. Yet they still felt surprisingly smooth at the same time. If you were to finely polish them she was pretty sure they would end up both feeling and shining like jewels. Like rose quartz.

“Sky class, as in Skyscraper class,” the captain explained as he leaned back. He focused his gaze on the dragon in front of them and tightened the grip on his sword’s hilt. “Just enlist and you’ll learn all about it,” he added without looking at her.

“Captain!” A woman with a much bigger gun than any of the others yelled out to him and captain Harumi slightly lowered through his knees, ready to jump.

Hyrin followed that woman’s eyes to see the gaping hole in the dragon’s chest that she and the others had created. Inside that hole, surrounded by bleeding flesh that was already regenerating, beat a heart that looked so human that it made her stomach turn.

The captain didn’t seem bothered, though. He pushed himself off the street, jumping up way higher than any human should be able to do and landing on the dragon’s claw, from which he jumped again, to its knee or elbow, and finally towards its chest. At the same time he jumped up towards that heart, one of the soldiers that had shielded them before now threw his shield up through the air, towards the captain.

Captain Harumi turned in the air, grabbing that shield and burying it into the dragon’s open flesh wound. The monster released a screech so loud that Hyrin was scared her ears would bleed, and clawed at the captain, but the woman with the enormous gun shot one of her exploding bullets right into its palm, taking half of its claw off with an explosion that far exceeded the size of a basketball.

Pieces of dragon flesh and blood rained down, even though the parts it lost immediately began to grow back. Had it had only a few more seconds, it might have been able to grow back enough for it to stop captain Harumi, but instead, Hyrin watched him pull back his ridiculously large sword and then swing around three times, slicing through the dragon’s heart with each swing, cutting it in four nearly even pieces.

As if he just finished a graceful dance, the captain came to a standstill with his legs crossed and his arms spread to both sides, despite holding that no doubt unbearably heavy weapon. And with a backwards salto, he jumped off the shield he had used as a platform as the dragon stopped moving and collapsed.

The earth shook beneath Hyrin’s feet as it hit the ground and she could feel Lily grab the back of her shirt to keep herself standing.

“That guy… is human, right?” She asked in a weak voice.

Hyrin swallowed. “I think so? Do humans move like that?”

“Not where I come from,” Row informed them in a similarly shaky voice.

“Or me,” Seren added reluctantly.

“He’s human all right.”

They snapped their heads to the side to see the woman with the ridiculously big weapon - maybe like a bazooka, although Hyrin didn’t know much about stuff like that - walking up to them, casually carrying that weapon over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing. She stopped next to them, putting her hand on her waist as she took her time to look Hyrin over from top to toe.

“Twelve, right?” She asked.

“Hyrin,” Hyrin corrected her in a small voice.

“Hyrin?” She repeated and she quickly glanced at Seren before turning back to her. Only now did Hyrin register that this woman had the same snow white hair as Seren, although she wore it in an almost fluffy bob just below her jawline. Did that mean they came from the same place in the same world? Hyrin resisted the urge to take a step back to create some extra distance between them. If so, then she also understood what her new name meant. Was she already in trouble from the get go? Should she explain?

“He’s the kind of human you only see once or twice every generation of reincarnations,” the woman continued before Hyrin could say anything else. “And he didn’t even show you ten percent of what he’s really capable of today,” she added. 

Had she been any other person, those words may have sounded smug, but somehow, this woman made it sound as if it were such a common fact that it was ridiculous that she even had to say it out loud. “That’s what it means to be a captain in the Dragon Annihilation Force.”

“And you are?” Lily asked boldly. Her tone sounded just the way it had done when Hyrin had first met her and she realized that the happy, friendly tone she had been using the past few days was one Lily had reserved especially for them. Apparently, Lily was the type to only be friendly to people she actually liked.

“I’m Leyleina, his vice captain and second in command of the D.A.F. training base,” the woman told them in that same, slightly monotonous voice. “In other words, the one who will be both your trainer and your commander if you decide to enlist.” Her gaze darkened. “Not that I would welcome a brat with a big mouth that can only cower in fear in the face of danger,” she added dryly.

Lily pressed her lips together, her face turning so hot that Hyrin could almost feel it.

“Well, too bad for you, vice captain,” she fired back and flipped back her long, dark hair, “because I am enlisting.” She gave the vice captain a sugary sweet smile. “I look forward to learning from you.”