The Dragon Boys

Beginnings:

Under the cover of night, Yuichi, a young man whom had grown in his first pair of head horns just four months ago, was loading up his red trimmed black motorcycle with a couple of bags for his round trip into the cities and lands where the humans lived.

His keen ears caught the sound of feet attempting to hit the forest ground ever-so-softly but it wasn’t soft enough for the demon-boy’s hearing. He turned around and sighed loudly in frustration at the sight of Kazuo, little Masaki, and little Hikaro, his little white dragoon-rabbit’s hand in his other light chocolate hand and long floppy ears and white loin’s tail dragging on the leaf-encrusted floor. Kazuo was walking his own motorcycle, laden with travel-bags strapped down with cords on the back part of the bike. The elder of the Asuki brothers carried each of their bags on his back while he held his little hatchling brother’s hand in his right.
All three were looking at the older teen with great big hopeful eyes. Yuichi was friends with their older siblings, the ones that went before him and traveled out of the fog that the Child-like Goddess had engulfed their little patch of heaven with, protecting them from the eyes and cruelty of the humans that lay just beyond it. One has yet to return and the blonde Draghi wasn’t going to wait any longer, though the rest of the tribe seemed to want to wait until the end of the world for their lost companion to come back.

Yuichi sighed, looking at the other three in exasperation. “Fine, but we go at my speed and we stop when I say so.” He pointed his finger at the younger bike-rider and focused his azure dragon eyes on the amethyst pair in front of him.

Kazuo nodded in understanding and agreement.

“Good.” The older teen relaxed his poise and told the younger of the Asuki that he would be riding with him for the duration of their journey.

In a few minutes, the roar of two engines echoed throughout the peaceful hidden forest of Draghi and floodlights brightened the world in front of the two bikes. With a nod between the two riders, the young Draghi teens and two hatchlings began their long journey towards the forbidden lands that no Draghi has ever dared enter until two short months ago.

************

Once they hit the Oceano della sabbia, the four Draghi were forced to take hour-long breaks roughly every two hours to avoid over-heating the engines. During these breaks, they would take the time to check on their water and food supplies.
During the cold nights, they slept in one big tent made from combining coats and shirts, sleeping huddled up-Yuichi and Kazuo on the outside and the small Asuki brothers slept on the inside- in layers and layers of clothes to keep off the cold night’s chill.

Amethyst eyes watched Kazuo as he hunted little lizards and snakes during the breaks and Yuichi practiced his ice-breathing, keeping the younger members of their strange group cool during the scorching heat of day.

There were little dessert stations as they neared the outer edges of the huge desert. Here Yuichi traded skills for gas, food, and water, doing whatever was needed to provide for the younger Draghi.
Once the older teen was gone for a long time on a job and came back with strange marks on his neck and collarbone, his lips swollen and bruised. He showed some discomfort and couldn’t sit comfortably for while and was quiet until they were long gone from that particular station.
He didn’t ever talk about it and the younger boys never brought it up after being hissed at a couple of times, taking the warning to heart.

*****

After a month traveling in the hot desert, they finally came across the crisp cool country sides and were able to take nice, calming baths in the nearby lakes and rivers. They kept trading skills for shelter, gas, food, and water, for they had nothing else to trade nor any money with which to buy supplies.

Sometimes they would run across someone with an overdose of the mother-hen gene and were treated to nice, warm food, a bed, and a bath for barely a hair’s breadth above free, also getting their clothes washed and mended by their temporary caretaker.

Occasionally, the older blonde would be gone for long periods of time and come back silent and irritable, just like that time in the desert, when his lips were swollen and he hissed menacingly at any questions. After awhile, the others knew that Yuichi just needed time alone and then he would be back to his cocky, mouthy self, though they were unsure which Yui they liked best. No one spoke about those times when he would come back with strange marks on his neck and collarbone, his lips swollen and bruised, and it was too uncomfortable for him to sit.

*****

The country turned into full-on, bright lights, city. The older teen was quick to find a job and a place for them all to live, always putting the lives of the others first.

They had run into a young widow who owned a little hole in the wall bar and grill whom had hired Yuichi as a bus/delivery boy and made the younger boys go to school with her own two children, one of her conditions of hiring Yui. She also made sure Yuichi helped with the children’s homework so he could learn the language and some math skills himself. He certainly had his skills, but it didn’t hurt to be slightly educated to the ways of world.

The four were able to excuse their snake-like scales, their arm-and spine-spikes, and little horn-nubs on their faces, as well as Yuichi’s head horns, as part of the latest fad of mixing animal DNA with human DNA known as Splicing.


Life was now good for the four Draghi.

Kazuo, little Masaki, and little Hikaro had friends their own age to play with, even though they still had to share a room together, having to share the upstairs apartment with the Hyder Family.

Yuichi never came home quiet and dark. Slowly, the strange markings on his body or the times he would come home with lips swollen and bruised and could not sit dwindled.

Then one day Kazuo reached that special age where boys and girls start the transformation to becoming young men and women.

And that seemed to be when the troubled all started…

***********************************

When there are seven people living in the same small place, the mornings are like rush hour traffic. There are always at least three people, mostly boys, in one bathroom; brushing hair or teeth, using the toilet or shaving. The older kids try to dress the younger children and prepare them for the day of school ahead. Whoever managed to get to the kitchen the fastest got the “honorable” job of pouring out the cereal and fixing lunch for the others.

This morning of all mornings, however, a large problem reared it’s ugly head. It was the third day of Kazuo’s first molting.
When a Draghi has their first molting period, they are not the most friendly of people, especially Draghi males. Here they start to have the most basic of urges, their animal instincts start to form and drive the young Draghi, throwing reason to the wind. Young Draghi males have the need to set their own territories and may try starting fights with the Bull Draghi, to challenge the Bull’s dominance, boundaries, strength.

When Yuichi went through his first molting, his uncle would just whack him upside the head and bite him hard in the shoulder, the slight, but subtle pain putting him in his place. Of course, that Bull was dealing with thirty kids that were going through their first molting period. Yuichi just had one to deal with.

So far…it wasn’t going so well.

Hikaro and Luanne came running down the stairs, almost tripping as they both tried to go down the narrow stairwell at the same time. Masaki and Alex were already eating Cheerios at the counter while Rhonda was busying herself with the kids’ lunches.

“KAZUOJUSTBITYIUCHI,” both boys shouted all in one breath at the petite redhead, who just stared down at the two six year-olds, dumbstruck, trying to separate the words in order to understand what the two had told her.

“Huh, what?” She asked but no one could answered her for there were several loud crashes above them, and then yelling ensued.
“What is going on here?” Rhonda asked as she rushed upstairs, expecting a war zone.

She was almost right.

By the time Rhonda, followed by the rest of the household, had reached upstairs, the blond male had the little white, ice-blue and ink-black finned dragon in a very tight bearhug, his teeth embedded in the nape of the striped neck.

“Yuichi?!” The woman screamed, fearing the worst while the children looked on from behind her, curiosity sparkling in their eyes.

“I’m not hurting him, I’m just trying to get him calm done enough so I could finish getting dressed before I take the kids to school.” He removed his teeth enough to speak but still able to bite down again if the younger teen in his arms tried snapping his teeth at him again.

The little water dragon began to hiss and squirmed in the older male’s arms. The azure-eyed Yuichi hissed back, his cheek rubbing rough against the ivory scales. Kazuo stopped and reverted back to his humanoid form with a sour look on his face.

“Now behave or I’ll muzzle you,” he warned as he left the distraught teen to sulk and he disappeared back into his room.

“What was that about?” Rhonda and her two children had just learned about their new room mates secret a month after the four ’brothers’ had moved in with them; that they were an ancient race of dragon/human hybrids that have been hidden from the world for over forty centuries.

It’s hard not to give away your secret when one has to explain why the youngest of the group was hiccupping fire.

Yuichi stood up, smoothing the wrinkles out of his black loose-fitted jeans. “It’s the squirt’s first molting period, kind of like human PMS, only it lasts two months longer.”

“Cheese and Crackers!” The redheaded woman sighed as she rubbed her temple. “Whatever you do, just don’t destroy the place.”
It was hard to get used to the idea that she was raising children that could breathe fire, or in some cases, ice or acid; that the boys could just revert to their primitive natures (which Little Hikaro likes to when he knows he is in trouble and attempts to hide under furniture or up in the corners of the ceiling).

It was a wonder that she hadn’t turned grey yet.

******

‘Why did God invent mornings?!’ Neal thought as he walked his nephew across the street to the little school house at the corner, where hundreds of tiny children and sleepy adults were pouring into. He rolled his ash-grey eyes at the thought that everyone was turning into a giant drove ants, marching day in and day out to the hill known as school.

A jerk bumped into his shoulder and kept on going, but was stopped suddenly as one of the teachers called out what must have been his name.

“Yuichi! Yuichi!” The punk looked back over his shoulder and Neal saw that the man’s face was almost covered in ruby-red and sliver-blue scales, little ivory horns cropping up along his brows to become smaller as they went down the bridge of his long nose. He also noticed that there was the strange, dark tattoo that went down the right side of his face.

‘A splicer?’ The brunette stuck out his lip and shrugged his shoulders. He had seen weirder splicing of animal genes, which hadn’t worked out as well. He wondered what type of animal the man was spliced with, he found it nearly impossible to determine at this distance.

“Yuichi, I told you time and time again that Hikaro can not have his stuffed animal with him during school hours!” The shrew of a woman, who reminded the high school teacher of his sister almost perfectly from the tight hair bun and down to the flat -heeled dress shoes, stomped right up to the blonde, holding the weird rabbit/lion/bat thing in one hand and a crying dark-skinned slimmer-looking pink-pearl haired child trying to grab his little toy.

“I’m sorry. Hikaro must have sneaked it in when I wasn’t looking.” Poor Yuichi took the animal out of the woman’s hand and the small boy leapt at him, wailing to have his ‘Tenten’ back.

“That’s Hikaro Asuki.” Neal looked down at his nephew who was just as snooty as his own baby sister. “He always tries to bring that stupid thing to school and cries every time Miss Hunter takes it away from him. He’s such a cry baby.”

‘The kid may be a cry baby, but his father is quite a looker. Given he’s a splicer, but still a nice looking specimen, nonetheless,’ Neal thought, knowing better than to tell little Logan what he was thinking. This little snot was like a parrot, always repeating what he says, but only when it would hurt him the most.

Tiffany still hadn’t forgiven him for talking about her anal way of eating peas behind her back during Christmas.

“Hikaro.” The blonde man knelt down and placed his hands on his son’s shoulders and wiped the tears that flowed from the boy’s eyes. “Tenten can’t go to school with you, but I promise to bring him with me when I come by to pick you, Masaki, and Luanne up this afternoon, alright?”

“Deal.” The poor little guy sniffed while still clutching his stuffed animal to himself like it was about to disappear. He held out his pinky to his young father.

“Deal.” Yuichi agreed as his much bigger pinky wrapped around the little finger and shook it. Pinky swears, clearly, were unbreakable on penalty of death (figuratively speaking).

Slowly Hikaro gave up his beloved Tenten and gave it a goodbye kiss before he was pulled back into the little brick building. Chris, his nephew, had disappeared a minute before without a single word of parting.

Snot-nose brat.

The blonde man stood up with a tired expression on his peach-colored face as he tucked his hands in his long, black coat, Tenten held neatly in the fold of his arm. Neal had a second to think about whether or not to approach the tall splicer before running smack dab into him.

“Hi.” The short greeting caused the other man to stop in surprise, a guarded look in his lizard azure eyes.

“What?!” he spat, fuming now that the teacher was gone from sight.

Lizard-man has a bite to him.

“That Hunter can be a total bitch when she wants to and she wants to very often.” When he was given the ’what are you talking about look’ from the tall blonde, the brunette man pointed at the weird animal in his arm.

“Oh.” His face softened slightly, though still on edge. “Yeah. I even had to hide it this morning when Hikaro isn’t looking. The whole thing makes me sick. What’s the harm in letting a child carry around a little piece of comfort in a strange place with such a mean spirited person to guard him?”

Neal nodded in sympathy and looked at his watch, noticing that he had an hour to get himself to the high school. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough time to buy the man some coffee and have a meaningful conversion, but maybe he could invite the handsome man out another time. For now, he’d settle for a fifteen minute coffee break with the splicer.

“Well, how about I teach you some better ways at hiding things from kindergarteners over a cup of coffee?” Say yes, say yes, sayyesyesyesyesyesyes. Say. Yes. Dear God, please let him say yes.

Yuichi tilted his head to the side as he thought about the offer, but gave a quick headshake no and left the deflated Algebra teacher on the sidewalk with his ash-grey eyes blinking rapidly in disbelief.

He shook himself out his stupor, already planning to take his “loving” nephew to school the next day to try and bump into…what was his name? Yui…chi…Yuichi, again.

No one can put off Neal Lee for long.
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A/n: Chapters 1-3 has been betaed by Lane. now everyone say THANK-YOU LANE!!!