The Long and Dangerous Road

[Anonymous]

Lindraeus' protest was to be expected. Especially with the reactions he was displaying back in the basement of the building. Regardless of what he thought, Feyda made up her mind and she wasn't about to change it. Not one thing could distract her from pushing forward to accomplish her goals.
"Latira?!" Feyda's voice was almost a shriek. She sounded surprised and thrilled at the same time. Not wasting a moment, the dark woman nearly sprinted across the street at the dragon. Once at her destination, she wrapped her arms around as much scales as she could.
"It's been a long time, old friend." She added, still pressed against the draconic scales.

[Anonymous]

Lindraeus' movements betrayed his thoughts, as he continued to follow Feyda but brainstormed every possible reason for not seeking out Anima. What use would they have for a cold-blooded murderer? And how, if even, would she help them in bringing down the Will of Divinity? Maybe Feyda was more concerned now about her heritage in light of these new details in lieu of their quest. Sure, both goals ran somewhat parallel, but he wasn't sure if he could stomach another one of those massacres, much less the murderer herself.
But, like it or not, that's where they were going.
So he concerned himself then with skimming over the handful of random reports and papers he picked up. He wanted to get the Vindication involved as soon as possible, as he figured they would be the single greatest addition to their force.
When Feyda called out a name in a high-pitched voice when they stepped out of the ground level building, Lindraeus looked up from the papers-
And promptly dropped all of them, and they scattered into a horrible mess at his feet. His mouth, the only part of his face visible from under his hooded cloak, was agape and frozen solid with a mixture of shock and awe.
Lindraeus stumbled back a few steps when Feyda charged, looking like she was about to engage the huge creature. He had heard of those before, the dragons of Earth, but he had never seen one before, not even a picture of one. It certainly would be more than a match for-
Feyda hugged it?
He pushed his hood up slightly, to make sure he saw everything correctly. Indeed, Feyda was attempting to wrap her arms around the immense beast. With most of his normal vocabulary vacated from his mind, Lindraeus nevertheless managed to say incredulously, "Feyda, you... know...?"


((Holy crap, I almost missed your post there Kanina. It took me by surprise. Welcome Back!))

[Anonymous]

Lindraeus was given little more than a glance as the dragon's attention was more prominently focussed on her friend. She lowered her head to Feyda who was hugging her leg, nudging her surprisingly gently for such a large creature.

"I missed you too, Feyda."

Her voice rumbled out of her throat. It was a voice that could not be properly played back without the base.

"I smell blood..?" And now she lifted her head to regard Lindraeus, looking him over for the substance, then shifted her weight. She was careful to keep the limb Feyda had claimed still, but she moved the others and turned to face Lindraeus more.

Don't worry, I don't think she's hungry.

(Thanks!)

[Anonymous]

At first, Feyda had forgotten all about Lindraeus and the task at hand. She was much too distracted by the sudden appearance of her best friend from long ago. When Latira mentioned blood, the dark woman looked up at her old companion, then to where the dragon was looking. She then let out a slight chuckle.
"No, Latty. Lindraeus is with me. He's alright. The blood is within the building behind him. There was a slaughter in the basement and we're going to go meet the source of the slaughter." Feyda explained with a smile on her face. She was a little too cheery for someone that wants to go look for a murderer.
"Come over here, Lindy. Say hello to my old friend, Latira." Feyda called out as she waved at the stunned man.

[Anonymous]

Lindraeus loosened up his tense muscles when it became less and less likely that the dragon would be hostile in any way. For starters, it was firmly established now that Feyda and Latira knew each other and were past acquiantances. But now, in lieu of his shock came slight confusion. It was sufficient to say though that, between them, it had just been a while. How they came about to be friends was probably a story for another day.
And the dragon mentioned the scent of blood, which made Lindraeus' eyebrows perk up once again. It was unnecessary to explain it himself though, as Feyda already had it covered. However, the trail end of her statement involving the 'source of the slaughter' still didn't appeal to him too much.
Then came the time for introductions. Lindraeus took a stutter step forward, collected up his scattered papers from the ground, then walked the rest of the way to be at Feyda's side.
With an awkward glance at her that seemed to seek reassurance of some kind, Lindraeus nevertheless looked up to Latira and said, "Hi, I'm Lindraeus. Nice to uh... meet you."

[Anonymous]

"I'm Latira, it's a pleasure."

She looked towards the entrance of the building, checking if anything else would come out, then looked back to the two on the ground. Yes, it had indeed been a long while since Latira had seen Feyda. Where had she been? Well, a little bit of everywhere was probably an accurate answer. Those extra dimensions do pop up in the darnedest places. In fact, thinking about them kinda puts your mind in a bit of a puzzle. Each piece of the dimension itself was so tiny an ant could barely breathe in it, yet Latira had just swooped out. It's lucky for her that those dimensions work around different rules. Those tiny pieces add up.

"Need a lift?"

[Anonymous]

Of course, Feyda expect Latira to offer assistance, but she's not too sure how Lindraeus would take to that. That aside, the dark woman looked up to the dragon and maintained her smile.
"Yeah, about that. The only lead we got about this person were are going to go find is that she has gone to Connlaoth. I'm sure you remember what happened last time we went there." Feyda pointed out to Latira, obviously sheepish about the offer. Nothing would be any better than arriving in an Anti-magic kingdom, riding on a dragon.

[Anonymous]

For a dragon, Latira was pretty polite. Admittedly, Lindraeus didn't know how dragons would normally behave on average, but he automatically and erroneously assumed that they would be less than cordial.
And Feyda, well before he mentioned it, made a valid point about Latira's appearance and their destination.
"It's true. Where we're going, we need a certain bit of..." Lindraeus scratched the back of his neck, trying to find the right word and not anger the dragon at the same time. "...subtlety, I guess."

[Anonymous]

"Yes, I remember."

Mordecai aren't fun pets for dragons. They make Latira asthmatic.

"I can change shape, though it's been a while..."

A while being... a century or two. Nonetheless, she could still dredge up the memory of being human form... yes, there we go.

She shrunk quite significantly, and it was all over in a matter of seconds, for the most part. She was a generic human woman, completely naked for an instant and featureless. Then slowly the features came... Red-gold hair hung down to her shoulders, her facial features took on a normal face lacking anything remotely cute. Generic black overcoat with generic black clothing underneath. She was the exact height of Feyda, as she had used Feyda as a model to go by. When her eyes opened, they were a dark blue-grey. A colour found no where on her dragon form.

And then she spoke.

"Yira hurwiod?"

She frowned, concentrating on the motion and speech.

"Damn voicebox."

But still she wasn't done. She stared off into space, clearly focussed on something within, and then everything about her lessened. There was absolutely no trace of dragon around her. Even the presence was gone.

"I've locked myself in this form so that, should we run into Mordecai and I can't access my magic, the dragon won't pop out. I imagine that would be... inadvisable."

What she didn't say was that, if she were to run into the Mordecai and be captured, she would be rather stuck.

"What weapons would you recommend, Fey?"

[Anonymous]

For once, Feyda was impressed. She removed her sunglasses to eye the human Latira up and down, clearly amused by what she saw. She stood back a bit and stared into Latira's eyes with her hands upon her hips.
"Not bad. You obviously have good taste." The dark woman mentioned as she continued to look over the new Latira. Then the draconic being mentioned being locked in her human form and Feyda's smirk turned into a grin. Although, only she could see the irony in the situation. When Latira asked about weapons, Feyda slid her glasses back onto her face before reaching into her coat. She pulled out a Micro-Uzi and handed it over to the renewed dragon woman.
"All you gotta do is point the open end at someone and pull the trigger. If you ever run out of ammo, let me know. I carry extra clips in case of emergency." Feyda explained about the hand held device. Now that their appearance problem was out of the way and properly armed, it was about time to head out and begin their new task. The dark woman's grin came back as she remember why she grinned earlier. With a roll of her right shoulder, Feyda tensed her back muscles and a pair of dark blue feathered wings shot out from the two holes in the back of her longcoat. After a moment to recollect, she held a hand out to Latira with her grin as big as ever.

"Need a lift?"

[Anonymous]

She could change shape? That'd be useful, but Lindraeus almost doubted that that would be enough-
And before he knew it, there was no longer a hulking dragon before him but rather, and to his immediate shock and surprise, a humanoid female. Who was also naked.
"Ah! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he pleaded as he turned around and covered his eyes in one single motion. "I didn't mean to look!"
Lindraeus' mind swarmed with every worst-case scenario possible following that. What if he offended Latira? What if he offended Feyda? What if they them both? What were they going to do to him?
"I'm sorry!" he piped out one last time, keeping his back turned to her and his eyes firmly covered.
When Feyda and Latira started to parlay though, with no overt signs of impending retribution upon his invading eyes, Lindraeus slowly turned about and lowered his hand from his face. Latira was clothed now, and strangely, bore a striking resemblance to Feyda.
And it was about that time to head out, and Lindraeus was more than happy to switch subjects. Even if their goal and destination didn't exactly thrill him, he still had to wash out that horrible taste of embarassment.
"Alright, I guess we can get going then," said Lindraeus as his own white wings sprouted from his back.

[Anonymous]

Latira raised an eyebrow at Lindraeus' outburst. She hadn't really been paying too much attention to what she'd looked like during the transformation.

"Nice. But I got my own. I still have access to magic." Latira winked and stretched out an arm away from the two, and for a moment, the outline of an outstretched wing surrounded it in a shimmering light. Very similar to the ones she had as a dragon. It was handy to have clothing that was what made from what used to be her scale plating. The wings wouldn't rip her coat when in use.

Even after the change, she was still thinking about what may be useful in Connlaoth. She re-thought this whole "locked-in" thing, and modified it to "let's keep the magic close but not bursting out." Which basically meant that, should a Mordecai not present itself, she wouldn't have to think so much to get at it. Magic, to her, was as natural as breathing. She didn't want to be vulnerable.

She took the gun and examined it. She'd seen Feyda use cousins of this before and knew of their destructive power. She didn't want to think about what would happen should she take a round in this current form, without her magic.

"Let's go, then."