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Ryuu’s face softened as Tobi mentioned that loaning him his blanket wasn’t any problem at all, it was about that time that Ryuu started to run his hands though his hair in attempts to get the tangles out of it. ”Is that so? It must be nice to have your own built in furnace, man… the more I become a girl the colder I seem to get… then again maybe it’s just because of the season change. We may need to find a way for you to transfer that body heat over to me if we’re going to be traveling any longer.” The slight smile that was on Ryuu’s face dropped off and he slowed the movement of his fingers going through his hair. What if… they weren’t able to find the unicorn horn before winter? What then? Tobi might be able to sustain himself in the cold, but there was no way that Ryuu was going to be able to survive it dressed the way he was, and with the equipment that he had, even if they got new stuff, it would be more trouble than it was worth… not to mention that their parents would likely be getting worried about them. There was a dreadful, sinking question that suddenly haunted his mind.
”Tobi… If… if I become stuck like this, if we can’t get the unicorn horn… our friendship won’t change, right?” Ryuu tone was soft and rather unsure, as if he was afraid to get the answer that Tobi might provide for him. Ryuu grimaced a little as he came across a rather large knot of hair that pulled his scalp as he tried to work it out. What if… what if he became a full girl and wasn’t able to change back afterwards, what would become of his life? What would change and how? Ryuu was starting to get a little scared about the future and what might happen if everything went straight to hell on him. Would he out casted as a result? Would the courts utterly strip him of his right to rule because of some loop hole that was in the laws? He was starting to feel despair crawl into him, making his eyes water in the fear of what would happen to him if this wasn’t reversed. Ryuu brought his hands up to his eyes and wiped away the tears that were starting to form enough to flow down her face.

”Well well…. Look what the hell we have here. It smells like a Kin-traitor Whores son.” A distinctly female voice came not far off from the pair sitting by the campfire. She wore a wicked grin that spread across her face, fangs glistening in the sun. The woman was physically fit, fairly tall for a member of the ‘fairer sex’ with patches of deep purple scales. She wore a sleeveless overcoat that showed off her thick arms, her purple hair was wild and spiked, falling well past her mid-back. Tobi would be able to smell the scent of Dragon on her, and she was a particularly strong one, despite being around Tobi’s age. Her red eyes looked down on him with some level of sick amusement. Her pupils were the slotted eyes of a reptilian predator. It seemed that Tobi’s worst fears of finding his mom kin had been realized. Her eyes rolled over to Ryuu who was somewhat glaring at her, though part of the humans look was puzzled. ”Feh. You’re just like your filthy mother, I can see that you love humans too… though I have to admit, this one looks like she’d be fun to have my way with.”
It wasn’t possible to follow with the naked, untrained eye, but before Ryuu knew it, he was in the crook of the girl’s arm, in the next blink of an eye he was a stone’s throw away from Tobi, the crook of the dragon girls arm was around Ryuu’s neck and he had to bring up both of his arms to pull down on it.
”Normally I won’t degrade myself to a human, but maybe I’ll make an exception this time around…” She was trying to piss him off, it was obvious by now that she was trying to get Tobi into a fight, to test him out, to see how powerful he really was. Her hand started to make its way south to the ‘Princess’ lower regions. That sick grin stayed with her until she got to where she was wanting to go a blank look spread across her face. ”What the…?” The Dragon girl didn’t finish her sentence and looked down in time to have Ryuu bring his head back into her nose. With a sickening crack and howl of pain, the new comer of the group let Ryuu go, and he quickly pulled away and took a stance beside Tobi, Ryuu’s sword came out. ”Hell… I knew you Human lovers were weird… but DAMN!”

Ryuu smirked. ”It’s good to be back pal.” He replied with a touch of amused humor in his voice, he drew his saber and leveled it off, taking up an aggressive stance before he followed after Tobi and charged towards the intruder.

The she-drake popped her nose back in place before snorting out a gob of blood from each nostril. ”Oh please, Taint, you and what army are going to take me down huh?” She asked with a bit of a sick, amused grin as scales crawled up her arms and her fingernails became talons. She counter charged them with a violent force. Her scales were hard as rock, Ryuu’s sabre did nothing to her hid as it was deflected by the scales and forces to harmlessly slide down her body. Then came her punch, which sent poor Ryuu crashing into a tree, thankfully away from the horses and the camp. The Tree splintered and started to topple over, sending birds to scatter and fly away. Raking claws then turned to the direction of Tobi as she tried to slash him from his left hip to right shoulder. This girl wasn’t messing around, that was for sure.

Ryuu felt a splash of pain as he broke the tree with the impact of his body, his darkness element absorbing a lot of the impact, but it was still a nasty blow. Ryuu grimaced as he pushed himself up and watched the events fold from a distance. He hated to admit it, but this might be a fight he may very well need to stay out of for the most part. She was… just too strong, and Tobi would be the only one of them who would have a chance. Ryuu closed his eyes for a moment.
No, that wasn’t quite right, he knew that he could do something. But… he would need to plan carefully or this might not work at all. Ryuu put his sword back, it wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good against that hide of hers. This was going to be taxing (especially before breakfast… dammit! Why couldn’t she have come after they ate!?!) but it was probably going to be the best shot that he had against her. Ryuu concentrated, gathering the darkness that was going to be both a halberd and a shield for his best friend.
The one person he trusted the most in the world.

The she-drake brought up her right arm to block the sword, stopping it in its tracks with her tough as nails hide. It was no wonder that so many warriors were after dragon scale armour, the stuff was as strong as diamonds. Her left hand grabbed Tobi’s leg as he tried to kick her in the chest. She gave a wicked and rather amused grin at Tobi. ”My, my… aren’t we overconfident. You’d best save your boosting for when you defeat an opponent, or else you’ll look like a total idiot.” A flicker of flames poked out from her mouth, she was going to give Tobi a face full of fire from a full blooded dragon. It was about then that Ryuu literally ducked under the blocked sword and brought an uppercut with him, darkness surrounding his fists as he lashed out at the she-drake who was about to try roasting his friend. He didn’t know the difference between half blooded and full blooded dragons, but he assumed that even Tobi would be having troubles if he got a face full of piping hot dragon breath. He lashed out a frenzy of punches, forcing the she-drake to let go of Tobi’s leg and pushing her back to give his friend some room and time to recover. The full blood was easily dodging Ryuu’s punches, that damnable amused smirk bearing her teeth at them. She was too damn cocky for her own good, though she seemed to have the power to back it up. As if to confirm that train of thought, the She-drake ducked Ryuu’s right hook and grabbed his hair, Ryuu felt a painful tug before he was pulled off of the ground and swung in the air like a mace for a few spins before being unceremoniously tossed away. Ryuu hit the ground, hard and started to skip along the earth, the hair that had been pulled out had quickly regrown that’s to the stupid curse. Ryuu’s darkness once more rushed to try and cradle and protect its master while he waited for momentum to stop… or the trees, the trees would stop him too…
The woman then launched herself at Tobi, her fist hauled back and ready to smash him in the face so that he could have a similar ride as his friend did.
”My name is Hlin, worm, remember it as the woman who killed you and your freakshow lover!”

”What did I tell you about boosting before you’ve done something, worm?”When Tobi’s punch connected, it was as though he punched a brick wall, the swipe from his claws caused Hlin’s head to snap to the side. There was a moment of silence before she started to chuckle darkly and with some malevolent tones. ”You don’t use your Dragon form very much, do you?” She slowly turned her head back to Tobi, the claw marks on her face were little more than light scratches, already fading away with her abilities to regenerate. ”Your claws, and scales… they haven’t had time to develop because you’ve kept to your human form far too long. You supress your Dragon blood, and that makes your dragon characteristics weak, boy…” Hlin suddenly started to take on her dragon form, her purple scales started to crawl over all of her body and her body started to ripple and morph, her voice got deeper and deeper. ”But you know something, maggot? My Grandfathers name was Abraxas as well… I guess that makes us cousins. Now… normally I wouldn’t use this form for a bunch of small fry like you, but I think because your family, I’ll give you the honor of being butchered by me while looking as though I truly am.”
Hlin’s dragon form was truly monstrous, in addition to her regular wings, her front arms extended to create a second pair, her neck wasn’t all that long compared to other dragons, but she had an excessively long tail that ended in a nasty club shape barb. Her jaws were clearly for crushing and those rather beautiful purple scales glistened in the sun. She was at least three times bigger than Tobi in his form, so if he thought he was going to beat her on his own, he was probably going to be sadly mistaken. With a few mightly flaps of her wings, she had taken to the sky, and by the looks of things, she was going to be doing some aerial assaults.
Ryuu had shaken the stars out of his vision and pushed himself up, god… today was already looking miserable and they hadn’t even had breakfast yet. When Ryuu looked over at Hlin his eyes widened a bit. Gods, what had they gotten themselves into? He looked over at Tobi and rushed over to him.
”Tobs, we need to get into the air, if she starts breathing fire on us now we’re toast… in more ways than one. If we keep to the air, we won’t have to worry about our horses and supplies.” Ryuu suddenly jumped on his friends back. It looked like he was going to come along for the ride whether he liked it or not. ”Ready when you are, buddy!”

Though usually Ryuu was a planner… he had to admit that they were up against some seriously uneven odds here.
Ryuu was sort of still wrapping his head around that Tobi was a dragon, he had only seen it yesterday but the presence of his best friend taking on a dragon form still put him in relative awe of the situation. Though… why was Tobi taking off his pants? Ryuu’s face went a little red, though he live cheerfully with the fact that Tobi had already conjured scales to cover what Ryuu would need eyebleach to remove from his mind. He supposed that saving the pants was pretty important if they were going to be riding for a good period of time. He imagined that riding a saddle with nothing on but what the Goddess gave you would be far less than comfortable.
Ugh, discarded pants aside, Ryuu brought his mind back to the trouble at hand, the fact that Hlin was taking the bait… and she was bloody fast. One would think that with two sets of wings that she would be rather awkward in the air, but holy s**t… was she fast. Ryuu looked behind him and saw a maw full of fire and pulled on Tobi’s horns like a horses reigns, urging him to the left. What they seemed to lack in power and size, the pair seem to more than make up for with maneuverability. That was a good thing to know, Tobi could turn on a dime compared to Hlin who needed to take some more time and space to turn or had to stop in air and change directions. Wheels started to turn in Ryuu’s mind. They didn’t seem to have anything that could bypass those scales… Ryuu was still for a moment until he suddenly lifted his head and then looked down at Tobi, raising his voice so that Tobi could hear him.
”Hey Tobs! Can you get me close enough to her so that I can get on her? I… might have something.”

If Ryuu was any sort of rational individual, he would be second guessing this madness… fortunately for him and Tobi, he was often an impulsive person when things called for it. With a wobbly stance, Ryuu brough himself into a semi- squatting position, waiting for the perfect time to jump, Tobi had hardly got in a parallel line when Ryuu made a huge leap of faith onto the back of Hlin. There was a violent roar before she performed a barrel roll, trying to smack Tobi out of the sky and throw the filthy human off her back. Ryuu yelped and grabbed on to whatever he could to avoid falling off. Hlin took to higher into the sky while spinning as fast as she could in attempts to dislodge this intruder that was on her back. Ryuu used his darkness to create something of a rope that he used to hang on for dear life. More than a few times in the spins he could feel his legs kick off the solid foundation of the dragon that he was riding… or rather he wasn’t falling off of…
Ryuu was having a hard time executing his plan while the She-drake was as mobile as she was. Man, she didn’t looked like she was as mobile or fast as she really was while he was on Tobi’s back, it really was a testament to his friend’s speed and skill in the air. It was truly impressive for someone who didn’t seem to take to the sky very often. Ryuu quickly tried to get where he needed to be, he slowly and carefully moved towards Hlin’s neck where she would likely be the most vulnerable, hopefully Tobi would provide some sort of distraction so that she would ignore him for a while as he climbed towards his goal, slowly and carefully if need be.
Ryuu was starting to think that maybe… this wasn’t such a good idea, well… there was no turning back now. Ryuu eventually made it to Hlin’s neck where he straddled her back and placed his hands on the right side. He concentrated, which was a little easier said than done when you’re desperately holding on for your life. Ryuu knew that he couldn’t get past the scales with normal attacks, so he was going to attack her from under her scales. In order to do so, he needed to have physical contact with what he was going to attack. Not an easy or wise thing to do when you were attacking a human, but something as large as a dragon, well, that might work a little better. Ryuu channeled his darkness into the neck of Hlin until he built up enough pressure to finally cause some damage. There was a blast of darkness and Hlin howled with pain as blood sprayed our from the large area the Ryuu’s darkness had opened the veins and arteries in Hlin’s neck. The regeneration of the dragon was quick to suppress the damage. Hlin thrust her head violently back and forth, dislodging Ryuu from her being before taking off towards her cave where she would heal her scars and plot her revenge.

Ryuu was in the air, freefalling towards the mountains again, he wasn’t worried though, he had every faith that Tobi would come and save him as he did before. He watched the massive form of Hlin grow smaller in the distance. They got lucky, they really did, and he wasn’t above saying that it was nothing sort of miracle that they both survived. Hlin was probably more stunned and spooked that something got past her scales more than she was severely wounded. Hopefully though, this would be the last time they saw her around. They were going home shortly after this… hopefully… so there was no need to be in her territory any longer.

Ryuu gave a bit of a grin. ”Thanks pal… though I think ‘Dragon Spooker’ might be more accurate in this situation.” Ryuu took up Tobi’s suggestion very, very quickly and started to break down the campsite, he certainly didn’t want to be here anymore than they already had. Hlin may have fell for it this time, but it was unlikely that she would allow that same trick to do her in next time, and he certainly didn’t want to be around when there was an angry, pissed off dragon kicking around and looking for a little pay back. It didn’t matter which thing went in whose bag anymore. All that mattered was they got the hell out of there… sadly, without breakfast though. That was Ryuu’s only regret… not that it had been much anyway, nor was it salvageable when they got back, after the fight, the food had more or less burnt to a crisp, a sad offering to the Goddess as thanks for letting that work and letting them get away with their lives.

The journey continued though, it was weeks sense they last heard from Vidor and they were turning up nothing for the Unicorns horn. They had all the ingredients, spare the one. The failure of it made the bitterness all the more real when they realized they had come so close, and yet they fell short, all that hard work, was for naught in the end. Ryuu knew that Tobi would be willing to go on into the winter months, but… Ryuu knew that wouldn’t likely change the outcome. Tobi was the one who gave him the choice whether they stayed on the hunt or went back home. It was in the Tavern that they were no located that Ryuu seriously pondered over what to do. The ground had already seen hoarfrost and the nights were getting far colder. They were also running out of traveling money too. It was in their rooms that Ryuu finally announced his decision, while looking out the window and looking utterly and totally exhausted.
”Lets head back home tomorrow, Tobs… we haven’t so much as gotten a rumour to where we could get a Unicorn horn and it’s been two whole weeks. I don’t think that we’ll make any progress in the winter at all, and even if we did get a miracle, we would likely be held up with the snow trying to get back home.” Ryuu was devastated… he had one task, just one… find and collect the ingredients for a potion that would get him and his sisters genders back to where they were supposed to be, he… wasn’t looking forwards to seeing Niccy’s disappointed face when he brought back all but one ingredient. Tears welled in his eyes and he brought his hand up, resting his fingers on forehead to try and descretely hide the fact that he was crying. ”We’ll rest here for the night and head out in the morning, any objections?”
Ryuu was so disappointed with himself. In his mind, there was no excuse for this, his mom and Uncle saved his father from a tyrant in one long try, and here he couldn’t collect everything to finish his quest. All his own hard work seemed to mean nothing to him, though he appreciated Tobias’ labours and sacrifices wholeheartedly. Well, he supposed that he could look again when the spring thaw came. Hopefully next year would harvest better results. He just hoped that Niccy could hang on for that long.