The dragonhunter's council vibrated with a kind of tense energy unlike anything Beowulf St. George had ever seen in his life. The murmurs between the various hunters sometimes spiked into hissing and snarled comments -- he could see anger on the faces of Samson and Gideon, who were both sitting beside one another. Theodora, one of the very, very, very few female dragon hunters (being a female dragon hunter was considered...rather risky, all things considered) was reading her iPhone and frowning intently.
Beowulf cleared his throat. "The meeting shall begin," he said.
"This meeting is a farce," Samson said, immediately. He sprang to his feet and slammed his palms down on the table. "We're calling meetings, discussing, debating, doing everything except for our god given duty of slaying dragons." He tossed down a copy of the daily paper onto the table, where it skidded to a stop. "And now, Jeremy Bayer has shown his true colors!"
The newspaper in the middle of the table had the headlines:
WAR IN UKRAINE! THOUSANDS DEAD! WORLD AT THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON!
"My god, he's in league with Putin!?" One of the dragonhunters exclaimed.
"...not...that story, here," Samson said, then pointed at a small article tucked in the corner that read:
Proud Boy Rally Disrupted by Mysterious Antifa Protester.
Beowulf St. George reached out and took up the newspaper, flipping past the three stories about cancel culture run amok that were folded between the Ukrainian War story, before finally coming to the second half of the article, reading aloud: "The mysterious antifa protester was dressed entirely in silver and carried a baseball bat..." He frowned, then flipped around and saw the photograph was clearly of a masked Skye Silver, her arms flexing as she showed off to the camera.
"How the hell did she get a photo taken of her?" Theodora asked. "The Working should make that impossible."
"The camera was held by one of her human minions," Samson said. "This is the worst possible nightmare scenario -- dragons working with humans, to allow their preposterous abilities to actually cause
lasting damage
to the world."
There was a long silence.
Then Gideon leaned in. "I mean, is it really the
nightmare
scenario?" he asked. "Like, the Proud Boys are assholes."
Murmurs of agreement came from around the table. Samson frowned, impressively. "First they came for the Proud Boys-"
"I'm gonna stop you right there," Beowulf said, holding up his hand. "That poem is about the people that fascists like the Proud Boys want to exterminate. We're not going there. I mean, we may be an ancient order of dragonhunters who hate fun and want to kill innocent, adorable dragons, but we're not
monsters
."
Jeremy, who had been listening to Penny describe this whole event, frowned. "He didn't really say that, did he?"
Jeremy and his five dragon girlfriends were in his bedroom, with Penny Copper laying on her back on the bed, her head leaning over the edge, looking at him upside down. "Well, I'm paraphrasing," she said.
"That was still a very insane thing you did," Cinder said.
"It wasn't
that
crazy. We Coppers are actually quite sneaky, unlike
some
people here," Penny said, putting her hand on her chest primly. "Anywho, the dragonhuners debated back and forth blah blah blah, yadda yadda, anywho, Samson split off from the main group and is going to attack the mansion tonight."
"...you kinda
buried
the
lede
there, Penny!" Jeremy said.
"Nah! The newspaper did, though," Penny said.
***
Gwendolyn Bayer had noticed, faintly, that her life had gotten kind of weird lately. It was a string of improbable events that, if she had been anyone else, she might have brushed off as her god given right as the first and only main character of the universe. Younger people did tend to think of themselves in those ways. But while Gwen was fairly young for a mother of three, being about 36 and change, she had still lived a whole hell of a lot of life in those three decades and change. She had seen her husband leave her. She had had to raise a pair of twins and a deeply empathetic young boy who tried to hide the damage the world did to him. She had started a business, and had to keep that very business secret from her children and the rest of the world.
It had been, in a word...alot.
So, despite ancient Lemurian magic older than every extant civilization on Earth working overtime to make her not notice the effects of five dragons on her life...she still thought it was just a tiny bit
weird
that she had gone from being barely making ends meet with a house she half owned and half rented to living in the mansion of her daughters' boyfriend's parents, with millions of dollars and her own personal maid.
She had noticed how it was faintly
odd
that said maid was perpetually dressed up like a catgirl.
And was the same age as her son.
And went by the name Morgan.
And had the surname Clarke.
Just like her daughters' boyfriend. Now, the fact that her full name was Morgan C. Clarke and not Morgan B. Clarke did seem to be pretty definitive evidence that she was someone else and yet, despite that, suspicion persisted.
And then there was the fact that Jeremy -- who she loved dearly and knew was an absolute sweetheart -- had gone from having no girls and no friends to having
five
friends who were all girls and, quite possibly, girlfriends.
Gwendolyn had started her investigations subtly at first. Checking her bank account to try and find
where
the money had come from. Jeremy said it was from a contest, but she had googled the name of the contest and found...nothing. She had gone from there to quietly questioning her maid -- subtly, at first. Morgan had dodged.
Gwen considered the answers as she sat at her working desk in her bedroom, her finger brushing along her chin, her lips pursed. She looked at the blank workpage she had open and considered her last conversation with Morgan C. Clarke.
So, Morgan...C...Clarke, any relation to Morgan B. Clarke? He used to be quite important to my daughters.
Nah.
