===Micheal===

  I’ve got a secret to tell ma! It’s a secret she has too, so she should be happy for me. I run up the dirt path that lead to the cabin on the edge of the woods, where Ma and mom and I live. Step step step on the stone don’t want to get my new shoes from uncle dirty! He was nice and gave me new shoes when I figured out my secret in front of him.

  Tap tap tap on the door! I waited like a good dragon, because good dragons are patient! Ma opens the door and smiles. “Oh, hey bud. Was about to pick you up from Harold’s place.” She looked at me and her smile grew much wider. “I see...wow. Did you find out you were a [][][][]?”

  I pouted. Ma knew my secret before I could tell her. I turned my nose up, before sticking my tongue out. “If you knew about it, then it wasn’t a secret I was gonna tell you!” Ma only giggled, before picking me up and hugging me. She was gentle and close, her hair a nice color. I want a color like that for my hair.

  “Now, now dear. It is a secret to everybody other than us and your other mom. She’s out collecting reagents, but its just you, me, and Harold. Just a nice surprise.” She nuzzles into my head. “My little girl is growing up.”

  “Yu huh. Am girl now.” Ma’s hold is sweet. Loving. I fall asleep in it as I love being a gi[]l so mu[][]. I wanna be a []i[]l.

  [][]rl.

  g[]r[].

  [][][][].

  [Integrity of lock losing ground. Reseed and wipe. Return to Gauthier.]

  [Return to-]

  I snap awake, feeling the moist air of the train fill my nostrils. Minfilia was gone from my side, and looking over at Dizzy...she had a nasty wound on her leg. Seemed like it was stabilized, but it looked nasty. I then look over to Katarsis and…

  There was instead another cute girl sleeping in the bed. Her shirt was big, her hair was long like it hadn’t been cut, going nearly to the small of her back. Her chest was moving up and down in a rhythmic pattern that left me feeling kinda…

  I shake the feeling. I can’t. I can feel the heat from my face flush, and the rather painful tug of my heart. No. Not now. Please not now.

  I feel a clenching in my throat. A chain comes rumbling out of my mouth painfully as I try to think why. My body wants, my mind wants, but there’s a resistance there I cannot fathom. I don’t know what I want, but I crave it. I demand it. And am denied it in turn.

  Then the door slams open to reveal Eloise with a big bag of things with Minfilia holding snacks behind her. “Heya! Morning sleepy heads, I got lessons to teach and shit to show. Sorry, overriding the college thing. Not that you aren’t going, but with events laying out, may as well-” She was elbowed by Minfilia to stop, letting my girlfriend in.

  Minfilia set down the snacks between the four of us. A pack of spicy chips for me, pickle chips for her, Dizzy gets a pack of jerky, and...wait, the girl gets a thing of cheesy twists. Like…

  Both Dizzy and the other girl stir. Dizzy was heaving badly and trying to focus, taking the jerky and mumbling a thank you. She seems out of it. What happened to her?

  The other girl nodded and ripped open her pack. She took one bite and sighed. “I missed this so much. Just...being here with y’all.”

  “Who are you?” I asked her. Her face dropped into a defeated frown.

  “Gonna have to ask the same thing. You’re sleeping in K-”

  “DON’T SAY THAT NAME.” She yelled quickly, interrupting Dizzy and scaring her. And me, honestly. She then cleared her throat. “Look, it’s complicated. I’m Jackie, Dizzy.”

  I saw Dizzy mouth a holy shit, then look at me and Minfilia. Minfilia smiled at her. I was just confused. “Holy shit girl, you look great. Better than the other person in that body. I think. Mind control?” Dizzy had exclaimed.

  “Something like...like that. More...more than one person up here. He’s still around, unfortunately.” Jackie replied.

  Jackie? Whose that? Not a name I remember. It’s kinda similar to Jack from the old days, but after...after the chains, I don’t know what happened to them. Minfilia and Dizzy came into my life in high school, but they said they knew me.

  I don’t know how. I only remember three others. Jack, Racket, and Richard. But they were all boys. After the blank spot in my life...it was filled with transwomen who knew me apparently.

  But it’s like...they always were, right? Right? I feel like I am missing a step here and once that step is found, then it’ll make sense.

  But it doesn’t. None of it does. There was a memory, then blank, then suddenly me and pop were running from some armed men in the rain. We went to dad’s house and he held us until pop could get a new place.

  I looked at the chain on the bed that I vomited up. It was covered in blood, rusting and wasting away. My head hurts seeing it. Then it vanishes like it wasn’t there, wisps on the wind carrying color. No one else paid mind to except Eloise, whose look was furious.

  Then she went to her bag and brought out...a presentation board. With several pages. Many look like they are over stuffed with information. Then a pointer. “Alright! Listen up, apprentices. You are now inducted into Eloise’s apprenticeship program. This program has started now, so I am going to be making things up as I go along. Example this entire presentation.”

  I’m sorry, what. “Uhm, who gave you permission to do this?” I asked. We were going to college for a reason.

  “Permission? Sorry, unfortunately I am going to ask forgiveness later on this matter, because we have two dragons here.” She points to Jackie, and...me. Me? I stare blankly again at this crazy woman, who whirls around to the presentation thingy and flips over to the first page.

  Dragons: What are they and are they human? (answer to the second is yes.)

  Dragons are borne beings who are put into two categories. There is the bloodline dragon(a picture of Jackie and Katarsis to showcase this. How she got them so fast is a mystery.), dragons whose blood can be traced back to the other dragons listed here. They are true dragons, which is a term that’s both stupid and weird. Like there’s no such thing as a half dragon. They have both a human form(any ancestry, randomly usually nomads despite usagi and gumihos being prone to jumping bones.) They are usually the fusion of several different colors of magic.

  Then there are the Leyline dragons(a picture of me sleeping peacefully with the scales up. The void had spread a bit. Why?). Leyline dragons have only nine variations, one for each color of magic. They are in essence the absolute masters of that color of magic. No access to another, which is unusual considering magic as used in the practices uses multiple colors and draws upon them. Limitations breed incredibly creative methods and usages. The only other masters of such colors are the Channelers, who have two. Granted they can fuse colors to create a new true color unique to them, which is a concept that absolutely dumbfounds the academic casters of the world. Mine is Rose.

  Anyway, the thing is that dragons only have access to magic from their colors and that information manifests themselves through the scales they have.

  Both have access to draconic abilities. Usually the Bloodline dragons can use academic magic and can breathe their elements because of their fused bloodlines. Meanwhile Leyline Dragons get memory recollection, a unique color breath that distills the essence of their color into a vapor, and draconic rage. Which is litterally calling upon all the trauma and pain of the previous reincarnations of that color out to go ballistic. Ever seen one? Not pretty, but fun.

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  So far:

  Katarsis pre unfuckening: iridescent. Meant they didn’t have some colors set for them.

  Jackie: Ruby the color of Heat. The rest in that head I dunno fucking ask them when they get out.

  M: Amethyst the color of Causality.

  She turns the page to the next chaotic presentation after that confusing mess of issues and randomness. What the hell compelled her to do it this way?

  Now you saw the concept of the Colors of Magic. Well that’s easy. All magic can be traced to nine colors. If you understand things, these colors seem to overlap yet do not. Its weird, but the colors of magic can map to the laws of physics as written by that fruit Jacoby back when he got hit with an ax and retired to figure out how physics worked and why that ax hit him that way. Fun guy, miss him.

  A N Y W A Y:

  The colors of magic are:

  Amethyst: The Color of Causality. It is cause, and often effect. How this manifests is a bit different, but I assure you understanding quantum physics might help. I also have this color :D. Note, you can’t change the past. All that much. The God of Time can, but if he was here, he’d be giving a whole lecture.

  Citrine: Color of energy. This is both active energy and potential energy. Sproingy. Can allow one to amplify the force of a blow, but also ENERGY. Very much an active color of sorts.

  Coral: The Color of Waves. Waves? Shit like radio waves, radiation waves, emotional waves, sometimes tides, randomly time is a wave how do we know this color has it? Fucking ask the god of time he’s weird. Claims time is an ocean the stupid sexy bastard.

  Emerald: The Color of matter. What kind of matter? Look at the periodic table and figure that shit out because it hits all of them. Summon them, manipulate them, delete them, eat them, I saw a guy use one as [][][][][][][][][][][][]. I [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]. Anyway, it’s not dirt, it’s matter.

  Onyx: The Color of Entropy. This one is interesting. My mentor has this and so far has done some shit with it. Essentially those with entropy have higher magic reserves because of the next page on the Wheel of Magic, but yes Entropy is a color. Delete shit. Replace shit, cause things to loose momentum or power. Destruction in its purest form. Also funnily enough has other things going on like gravity somehow.

  Pearl: The color of Life. Oh, healing? Naw, we got more than healing here. Plants, animals, humans, the mind, the body, mutation(though more extreme stuff can be explained later), and general life force shit. I have this and so does my mentor. Yes she has essentially life and death, she is a practiced necromancer.

  Penny: The Color of Absence. Emptiness. Why not copper? Magic named the names for its colors. Are we allowed to question it? No? Also this color represents the emptiness of things. This includes voids, vacuums, and anti-magic. No, Dizzy is not infused with it, that’s a different thing of having no magic. You still have the colors you tabby cutie.

  Ruby: Color of Heat. This goes both ways, actually. Fire and ice, heat and cold, summer and snow. Kind simple. Not to say what you can do is simple, but the semantics are easy enough. That said don’t go thinking you can generate water or fire out of thin air. Okay fire out of thin air is easy, oxygen burns. But water is a little harder because of moisture and weight and density and you might accidentally freeze the oxygen in the air instead which is a whole other can of worms. Just note if you freeze someone in a block of ice they are fucking dead because you aren’t just freezing water you are freezing shit like nitrogen oxygen hydrogen and a few others.

  Rust: Color of Motion. Moving shit here we are. Force, motion, crushing power. Also weirdly overlaps with other things, but then again physics is like the combination of colors deciding to feed itself into magic and with rust being the last I feel the need to point out that it is different to citrine because citrine includes potential energy and rust is all motion of any kind.

  She moves to push the page to the next...before splatting onto the floor like someone had cut her strings. “imokay.” She mumbled out through the floor, clearly not okay considering the sudden fall.

  Also this presentation was a chaotic mess. Like holy shit I barely could understand any of that. “Is she okay?” I asked, and Minfilia shook her head.

  “Look, I saw her down three cans of Demon Goblins, and the troll serving of them, and then...all of that.” She gives me a sad look, glossing over the fact that the madwoman drank that much pure energy drink. “You okay?”

  I nod. Then frown. “I mean, I vomited this morning. I’m not okay.” I still think a bit. Me, a dragon? A bit hard to fathom. And the chain was connected to that dream. “I’m...I’m going to get air.”

  Minfilia frowned, then gave me a hug. “I’ll come with. I kinda need some air for my new goggles to help them dry a bit anyhow.” She released the hug and took my hand, being soft and safe.

  I gave her a pat. “Thanks. Yeah, I am a bit unsteady right now. Plus I want to see these new goggles you have.” Her inventions were always neat. Like Richard’s were.

  Probably a coincidence. I stretch and get out of bed, taking my time to the open part of the car. Then I breathe in the air.

  It’s...nicer. So much nicer. Like I was breathing the sky. The sky. I want to touch the sky. I reach out for the sky, to touch it. Touch it now. I need to-

  I felt Minfilia’s hand grasp my arm, as I am now standing on the railing. My left arm had fully become scaled and clawed, bright Amethyst scales covering it. The claws were sharp, nearly raptoid in nature only accentuated by being on the end of my fingers.

  Then the scales retreated, leaving a void in its wake. In the depths of the void, I saw chains coiling around something deep in it. Hiding something, leaving a pit where a revelation is supposed to be.

  I hear the sky again. These chains are painful. Awful to the touch, and I can’t let them keep me. I need to go I need to touch the sky I need the open sky.

  These words repeat in my head over and over again and again. Like a virulent meme that refuses to leave. A command that overrides any other.

  The scales were safety. They hid the chains and void. They hid the pain. I let the scales return, with full claws on that arm. My left one.

  I heard Minfilia gasp in shock, then lift my scaly arm. “Holy, the color is so pretty and you.” She looks into my eyes with glee. “I mean, look at them! The color and luster is great! And I admit kinda hot.” I feel my face flush with heat at her compliments.

  Wait. Pretty. Pretty...[]ret- No. Pretty. My mind latched onto that. Like a vise. Like a predator hungry for prey. I could feel something happy run through my veins. Power too. Like the word itself let some kind of...energy I’ve never felt before unleash itself. Probably doesn’t help I am blushing like mad.

  The world slowed down as my arm rapidly blocked a blow from a dart of some kind. A man with a red band on his leg had a tranq gun in his hands, pointed at me. The dart clangs to the ground with a light tap.

  I saw three lines of actions that I could take. At least I think I can. Two of them would hit Minfilia. I took the one that didn’t.

  I held my scaled arm to block the second dart. He switched to a baton, and took the first swing. I blocked with my new arm again, but I actually felt the pain. Right, blunt impact still can cause problems.

  He winds up for a second blow. Two options, one blocking the blow has me collapsing onto the floor, with a dart ending up in my neck. The other has me dodge, with him slamming the butt of his pistol into my chin. Neither seemed that-

  Or the third option was seeing Minfilia’s leather knife stab into his face. I blinked twice, trying to figure out what happened. I was seeing...only the actions I can take. Okay, cool that’s kinda how it works.

  “Off of my [][]r[]friend!” She screamed as she drove the rather vicious but small knife into my assailant’s cheek. He was about to slam the gun into her gut. Two options of either breaking that arm or tackling him.

  I opted for tackling, knocking him to the floor. I then kick the gun out of his hand off the train. He tried to baton the back of my head, before Min’s hammer slams into him. “Got your back.”

  I smile. “You too, Min.” Time slowed again. There was a dart heading into her neck from behind us. I dive to save her from it, before the crack of the baton snaps on her face.

  My blood boiled. They hurt her. My lifeline, my trust, my grounded sky. My love...my other arm had covered itself with the selfsame scales as I lunged at our first attacker and R I P P E D H I S T H R O A T O U T.

  GOUGE. CLAW. GOUGE. CLAW. LET THE RUBY BLOOD OF THE WORLD COAT MY CLAWS AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL MINFILIA IS SAFE. NO ONE SHALL HURT SUCH A SOUL. GOUGE. CLAW. GOUGE.

  OTHER MAN THING TRIED TO DART ME. MY NECK DIDN’T MATTER, HIS HEAD WAS NEXT. A RUSH OF EXCITEMENT FILLS ME AS MORE BLOOD COATS THESE CLAWS.

  I WILL NOT LET THE CAGE HOLD ME. I WILL FREE MYSELF FROM THE CHAINS OF IGNORANCE TO REACH REVELATION. ENLIGHTENMENT.

  GOUGE. CLAW. GOUGE. CLAW. MORE BLOOD TO COVER. MY THRILL FOR THE BATTLE HUNGERS MORE. MORE. MORE!

  I SMELLED ONLY ONE OTHER THING. MATE. ONLY ONE LEFT ALIVE BESIDES ME. I RUN TO HER. CURSE THESE CHAINS, THEY TOOK THE WINGS.

  THEN A THIRD MAN THING CAME. A BAT IN HAND. HE SWUNG. I DODGED TO THE SIDE AS HE MISSED, KICKING THE BAT TO MISS MY MATE TOO. HE SCREAMED SOMETHING, NOT THAT IT MATTERED.

  I WENT FOR HIS THROAT. MORE GLORY FOR THE HUNT. MORE POWER. HE BARELY BLOCKED WITH HIS BAT, CAUSING HIM TO SKIRT BACK FROM THE BLOW. HE THEN TWIRLED THE BAT INTO A READY POSITION.

  LAUGHABLE. TRULY LAUGHABLE oh there comes the drugs. I slam onto the cold hard floor of the car catwalk as a gunshot rings out. Pain. I can still see and hear things, but they come like vague sensations.

  Something about a rage. I was picked up by gentle soft hands. Dizzy’s hands? Racket’s? I can’t tell. Is my friend here? I miss him. He was cool, always being the fighter despite his short size. Tabby could knock the socks off of a bully.

  Despite the words they used for us, he’d always be there to knock sense into them. I miss him.

  Is Dizzy his sister? I never asked before because it never came up, but my brain is now demanding that I connect the two. There was a chain there. Once. I think. Wait, I vomited that chain. It blocked me from making that connection.

  I should ask Dizzy if they knew Racket. I bet they don’t though. I lift my eyes to look at the face of my savior. It was Racket...no wait, my eyes focused, and it was Dizzy. Her face was pained, like she was in agony.

  Wait.

  Her parents. They said something about never having a Racket. Just always Dizzy. And Dizzy had the same parents as Racket.

  Wait. Wait wait wait.

  Was Dizzy Racket? Does that mean [][][][][][][][][][][][][]-

  [Lock integrity restoration eighty percent complete. Purged damaged links to preserve the lock.]

  What color do you like?