“Yeah… Almost like they’re dancing in the air…………….” I looked over at Kathy, she held her head high like she just got praised by her favorite fan. “So, is that how competitive flyers move?” I asked.

  Kathy looked up at her teammates as one dodged ten vines attacking at pretty much all angles and the other flying through debris and even between the gaps in the moving walls. While she considered my question, I realized her eyes held a shimmering sparkle, even her shoulders seemed to tense up before slowly easing up again. It was like the ground was just a pce to rest and slow down and the way she shifted on her taloned feet, maybe up in the air was more home to her than the house she used.

  “Yeah… it’s-” Her face frowned as her words turned into a confused scowl. “They’re amazing…. But, they could still do better.” She looked up at me with a cringe as if she just had lemon. “With most of my team injured, they can’t fully challenge themselves against multiple flyers. We’re getting rusty.” She said as her face hardened into one of coming failure. In that moment, I could see the castle she built over several years slowly blow away as if it were nothing but sand. She was small, tiny. Just for a second before she straightened her back and gave a determined face.

  “I’ll try to help you but, I’m not a pro…. I don’t think I could even call myself a beginner. But I will do what I can. I’ll learn whatever you’ll teach me and aim to be better than acceptable if not more.” I said as I stood up high with my chest out and my wings opened high above me as if demanding for a challenge.

  Kathy looked at me with widening eyes before closing them and chuckling to herself. “Damn.” She looked up at me. “I’m sorry I doubted you.” She said, confusing me for a second but before I could verify her suspension, she motioned to a smaller, me sized stagmite. “Come over here, I wanted to test your wing strength.”

  As we neared the stagmite, Kathy widened her stance while her taloned feet dug into the floor. “Get into a stance like this and make sure your cws are lightly gripping the ground. Just enough to hold yourself there but not enough to yank the ground up with your feet. Then I want you to fp your wings as hard as you can, cpping them together. Don’t hit the rock with your wings though.” She pulled her talons out of the ground and motioned for me to take a spot a little farther away.

  “Alright.” As I took my position, I widened my legs apart but my instincts told me to drag my cws into the ground instead of puncturing it. So I dragged my foot backward, letting the cws sink into the rocky ground. Once they reached where my foot should be, the cws were anchored in the rock and after doing the same for the other foot, I prepared myself. Pulling my second pair of shoulders, my wings arched backwards like the wings of an enraged goose while I bent my legs and body forward. And my tail stretched outward before the middle to the tip pnted itself firmly on the ground, the muscles tightening there, my back and in both pairs of shoulders.

  Pulling the muscles in my wings as taut as possible, I eyed the spot in the air between me and the rock in front of me. I looked over at Kathy who smartly pulled back near another stagmite. “I’m ready!” I called out to her.

  “Good! I’m prepared too! Alright, go on Three. One-Two-Thre-” She shouted.

  My wings were set loose, muscle pulling and stretching like the string of a long bow. I felt the air scooping into my wings as they swung closer together. I felt and even heard a heavy sound like dense metal hitting dense metal. With that, the air caught in and around my wings bsted several almost white cones roaring outward. I was even pushed back a foot or two, my cws raking through the ground like soft dirt. Some cones flew up, screaming like a banshee, the gust caught the wing of the bat monster and sent them spiraling across the gym like an out of control jet. Luckily the beetle seemed to use some of the bsting wind to dive in and catch their cartwheeling teammate before quickly twisting their back and smming their shell like exoskeleton into the wall.

  The wind that hit the stagmite in front of me was gouged. Chunks of rock all over the sides were ripped away, thrown far to either side of the stagmite. All while the front quickly split away, yer by yer as if it was going through a giant onion wrapped in pstic. The once bulky stagmite had shrunk to half my height and was rounded out into a pointed cone shape. I could even see several groves striping the cone like a newly plowed field. The floor wasn’t spared either as the wind cones had shoveled a curved, almost smooth path up to the stagmite.

  But….

  It just looks bad. Really bad! The hell’s wrong with me! I gred at the coned stagmite like it just dodged my attack. I can rip trees out of the ground and even cut through concrete! And yet this stupid piece of stone is resistant!? I’m not some punny little thing! I am the living embodiment of power! I am dang-

  I froze, finally realizing my wings were almost fully arched back for another fp.

  “Dangerous.” I whispered to myself. The word hit me like a bucket of ice water, murdering any fire I had. I simply closed my wings and yanked my cws out of the ground, the action only slightly distracting me from the thorn of ha-

  “Whoa-Wow! I’ve heard dragons were powerful but I didn’t know by how much! You even threw Ridley and Bas for a loop!” Kathy nodded her head in approval with a huge grin as if she found a secret weapon. “We have to test your resistances to headwind…. Ridley! Bas! Dust yourselves off and get over here!” She shouted over her shoulder before looking back at me. “I’m going to introduce the rest of the team and then I want to test them against you. No flying on your side for now. Is that ok with you?” She said, finally looking me in the eyes.

  Luckily I had quickly taken a breath in between Kathy’s examination of the smoothed out stagmite to hide any disgust. “That’s fine as long as I don’t hurt them.” I warned with a ft voice.

  “Surprisingly those two are probably the hardest nuts to crack. But I won’t be stupid enough to try our luck. So I won’t go past half their limits.” She said with an evil smile. That just made me eye her. She’s not talking about half here. But before I could voice my concerns the sound of a helicopter drew my attention to the approaching flyers.

  The beetle monster flew over with their gss like wings and hovered over the ground for a second, kicking a dust cloud before nding. Only they weren’t too tall, only looking to be 5’5? But I wasn’t sure if all beetle monsters were always tall. This one shined with a chromatic green except for the two white dots above their eyes, looking like teardrop shaped eyebrows. They had a slim torso like a tall skinny girl and rge shoulder….ptes? Pauldrons? Their upper shoulders looked like rge curved tear like shields. This first pair of arms were thick and looked capable of lifting a fridge with just one of them. Their smaller pair of arms looked more like a runner’s with how the exoskeleton gave them lean shape.

  The bat on the other hand was taller and more muscur. While the beetle wore nothing but a red armband, the bat wore the suit my flight css did, only it was a dark blue color and had a couple of weird divots where the chest should be. It was big enough for a pair of legs to rest in them. Their dark brown skin clung to their muscuture like a wet shit on their exposed arms, I could even see the outline veins running throughout the limbs. They had several sharp teeth, paired with bright yellow eyes so bright I thought they were search lights. Above her bat face stood two rge ears big enough to put my whole fist into.

  As I was observing them, the tall bat’s eyes shot wide open before bowing their head. They lowered so much that their body seemed to be tiny…… Wait! NO FUCKING WAY! The bat’s long and huge wing fingers pulled, shrinking backward, pulling the webbing with it before arranging into the shape of human hands. Their arms shrunk, squeezing the muscle until they looked like wide human arms. The huge shoulders looked more like rge tumors but with a sound of bone clicking, shrunk and popped into pce. Even their bat face fttened and reshaped itself into a small nose, rge eyes and the pokeable cheeks of a girl. Uh, I mean she was smaller now, like a mouse, nothing else. Uh, her heavily curled hair sat like a mini afro on her head, which was probably the only rge thing about her. Even if it looked small.

  But for some reason, both Kathy and the beetle stepped back, looking shocked as they looked at the now transformed girl.

  “Wa-what?!” Kathy barely said with shock printed on her face.

  “The fuck-tits just happened?!” The beetle said in an almost echoly voice, sounding like a raspy girl with a voice modutor.

  I stared in confusion. You can do that? I looked down at myself. Could anyone do that?

  “I am just paying my respects to the star lit dragoness!” She shouted back with anger in her voice before quickly turning back to me. “Forgive their r-rudeness and mine.” She said like a trained but surprised soldier.

  I mentally sighed. More dragoness naming and those weird titles….. “Don’t worry, Kathy’s a friend of mine. I’m here to help your team.” I said, trying to cut to the chase before she either freaked out more or saw me as something to worship but the girl looked at me with stars in her eyes.

  She quickly bowed her head four times, repeating the words ‘thank you’ like I just got her front row tickets to her favorite team. God fuck me.

  “Uh, don’t treat it like anything special…” I looked at Kathy who gave a teasing smirk as to say not my problem. greatly annoying me. “Instead you should be thanking Kathy! She managed to get a dragon to help!” I said in my most professional voice while Kathy’s mouth motioned the words, ‘oh fuck’.

  The bowing girl and the beetle looked at Kathy like she could crap golden eggs and candy. The girl csped her hands together and started crying as she shouted thank you after thank you at Kathy, faster than a machinegun. While the beetle grasped Kathy, hugging her in a very familiar tight hug my Mother loves to give. And Kathy gave me her best dagger filled gre she could while being crushed by an armored beetle.

  After her praises were sung and she lost a pound of air, Kathy was now a ball of raised feathers as she tried to give everyone a normal face. Only it was more a mix of annoyance, acceptance and neutrality, making her face settle on grumpy stoic.

  “Alright! Your gracious dragon patreon will be hitting you two with some of that wind power you felt earlier! And you’ll have to dodge the rocks he’ll throw at you!....” She said to her team with a fake friendly smile but her smile widened into a toothy grin that a demon might find unnerving. “And I’ll be trying to pnt you.” She added with a deathly gre.

  “But uh, you didn’t in..trodu…ce…us…….” The beetle tried to say but Kathy’s wings were already open, her feathers looking like razor sharp bdes.

  Her eyes narrowed before she pointed with a taloned toe at me. “That’s Oliver the great dragon.” She pointed at the quickly transforming, half bat, half girl. “That’s Bas the splitter and that’s Ridley.” She said, not even motioning to the beetle.

  Ridley looked ready to argue but one pointed look from Kathy made her wing ptes pop open and her gss like wings unfold into rge kitchen like bdes.

  Kathy led me over to an empty ptform facing the gym. She pressed a button on the wall and rge rocks the size of basketballs and fat pumpkins grew out of the ground. “Fp at a decent strength. Switch between forty to forty-five percent. And throw these rocks in front of my team. But no mana charging or spells.” She said as she ran her thumb through her wings, cleaning pebbles and grim from them.

  I couldn’t help but smile. Despite her annoyance, she didn’t want me killing her team and this gives me a chance to get used to my wing strength.

  After they got ready and I had at least a few dozen rounded rocks around me, we all stood waiting for the starting signal. And once Kathy shouted, Bas and Ridley shot up into the air and began zooming past each other. Crossing each other’s path in X’s and tirling Y’s, floating only inches apart as they evaded each other. It was like they were swimming with how they dived at each other, they both flew right at each other only to turn to their own right, flying sideways past.

  “Oliver! Get to it!” Kathy shouted over the small gusts of wind the flyers were making.

  “Right!” I grabbed a rock and aimed for Bas, waiting for her to separate from Ridley. Right as she started to curve upward, I threw the rock with about half my strength. The rock flew at her, racing right for her head!

  The rock was mere inches away from smacking her when she moved her body, turning her head to the side. Allowing the rock to bst past her with no impact. I was about to breathe a sigh when Kathy bolted in from behind, her feathers glowing a dark gray color. She wrapped her wings around herself, looking like a glowing cannon ball, moving twice the speed my rock flew at. And within seconds was in Ridley’s face, the beetle tried to pull away, her wings blurred like a zooming mia in an S shape. This only allowed her to escape from the full force as her wing pte was only dinged, making her rock side to side. But Kathy wasn’t done as she spun, now glowing green and levitating at a crazy speed. She rocketed after Ridley, chasing after her like a homing missile before finally tackling Ridley from the front, sending her spinning.

  While Bas was sent spiraling out of control, Kathy chased after Bas, the bat tried to dive away but Kathy was already above her. Kathy’s wings pulled open, sending green feathers like arrows that hit Bas’ right wing. But instead of falling, Bas put more force into her fp, rocketing her away from Kathy like a race car.

  “Come on Oliver! Don’t just watch!” Kathy reminded me. “Give us some turbulence!”

  With that, I pulled my wings open, only putting enough strength that felt like a zy throw into them, before they flew at each other. Letting my wings cmp together pushed out a mild beachfront gust that only barely made Kathy move back a little.

  “Not bad! But put a little more power behind it!” She said before diving at Bas again, sneaking under one of her wing beats. She spun, grabbed her wing with a talon then flew up and let go. Bas curled her wings into her chest, spinning backward like a ball before her wings pulled open in a dive. She curved her wings and glided up in a curve, fixing her downward dive and with another fp, she was zooming away.

  I pulled my wings back, putting more strength into them as I threw another rock, this time at Bas. she threw her body to the side, almost yanking herself to the right from being domed. While my wings opened, this time spreading my wing fingers as wide as possible. That felt weird, like I was pulling on my skin and stretching at the same time, giving me a good pinching sensation between the fingers. This time, I felt the webbing fill with a gallon or two of air as they swung shut, they even looked like a pstic bag in front of a fan.

  And the gale that whistled through my wings hit the three flyers like a rge wave. Sending Ridley spinning away like she was caught in a cyclone while Bas’ wings were filled with the screeching wind as it pushed her backwards. Kathy on the other hand fpped her wings, shooting herself backward like an arrow turned tuna as the gust hit her. She torpedoed her way at Ridley in a tight curve but Ridley seemed to notice her as she quickly closed her wing ptes and turned her shell at Kathy. She only smacked her with the side of her wing which Ridley used to right herself, spearing through the wind.

  Kathy used her impact to bounce off Ridley and with her tight curve, she was rapidly homing in on Bas. she was like a magic bullet, easily gaining on Bas as she struggled to close her wind filled wings. I could see the fear on her face as Kathy almost blurred through the air, her wings opening with a glowing green covering the edges like a shape glinting bde.

  But right as Kathy was about to ssh Bas with her left wing, Bas’ wing fingers scrunched together like a small paddle. The speed the wind gave her, allowed her to glide up and away from Kathy, all while two green balls shot at her as she passed below. One hit Kathy as she closed her wings into a cone shape speeding away from the other orb.

  They were amazing! Their ability left me wondering what the rest of her team could be and even their competition too. Maybe her rival was just as crafty…… and dangerous.