First Days Are the Worst

A few days passed before Leon was officially ushered in as the new Guardian of Zeleon. After all the flack he caught for being an Earth human, he was applauded at the end of it all. Though there was still a clear divide amongst the people, many of the smaller villages were much more accepting of him. Which likely stems from Maeva's overwhelming support, the Vampires and Komodrons supported him as well. He'd left a positive impression with both of them in the time he spent.

After the ceremony and a full recovery from another brutal fight, Leon was not out of the woods. In fact, the work had only just begun. Now, whenever help is needed no matter the time, the ones you'll call aren't the Ghostbusters, you won't put up a Bat Signal, but rather get a message to the Royal family and Leon will come running.

On the first day, there was already an incident in a nearby village. Maeva had planned to join up with him but Katrina was overly adamant in doing so. As they made the hour trek, the two didn't really speak. Until Leon got both bored and annoyed. He broke the silence between them.

"I take it you still don't trust me do you?" Leon asked.

"Of course I don't. Knowing you, the whole village will go down in flames." She snappily responded.

"Wowwww. You're just upset that I'm actually popular with that crowd, and want to make my first day suck with your persistent annoyance that comes so naturally." Leon responded with a smile on his face.

"Yes, I'm jealous of a commoner who's loved by commoners. Plus, I don't know why you'd want to travel with Maeva. She's not available after all."

Leon sighed as he shook his head. "You find it soooo hard that I can't simply like the company of someone I can actually talk to and enjoy being around. That's mean. Especially since she's a prude, and shares wayy too much with a guy my age."

"You're the prude in the making then." She retorted.

"Not even! That's Syrus, who's also green haired and green eyed. I think there might be a connection." Leon explained. "Anyways we're getting off track, what are we dealing with? A Giant Darkcrawler doesn't explain anything to me."

"A Giant Darkcrawler is the equivalent of a spider on your world." She responded.

"Ohh. Then what's so giant about it? Is it ten feet tall or something because of the environment here?"

"Giant is classified as at least thirty feet tall." She said with an unsettling calmness.

"Thirty?! Ok. You said we were protecting Zeleon from creatures. Not KAIJU!" He exclaimed as they continued forward.

"Well that's what we're dealing with. So don't whine about it." She pressed on ahead of him.

The pair made it to the village as Leon couldn't help but look up and have a chill run down his spine. There was indeed a thirty foot tall black, slightly hairy spider creature whose legs spanned a massive radius. Leon looked to Katrina and tried to break the situation down objectively.

"So...how do we minimize damage here? It'd be easier if your powers could flip it or something but it's too massive to try to think about moving it." Leon explained as the massive spider trounced through the village.

"Hurry up with something then! It's causing more damage!" She said in a panic.

Leon unsheathed Silva and rushed towards the massive creature. "Catch the legs for me!"

"Catch the legs…?"

Leon burned a bright flame with his blade as he climbed a building, and rushed to one of the legs, cutting it clean off with the intense heat he put out.

"Ok...that's what he meant."

Katrina used her telekinesis powers and caught the leg before it crashed into any buildings and moved it away. Leon skipped a leg and cut off another one, with Katrina catching it and moving it away. They did this two more times before Leon found a new dilemma.

"If I cut off more I'll make this big thing fall!" Leon yelled out to her as he tried to be as careful as possible.

"Try using those earth hands as big as you can get without breaking anything, or at least anything unbroken!"

"Got it!"

Leon used the earth element, and made three hands large enough to potentially carry it, but couldn't move through the village. Instead he tossed the spider away, hitting one of the nearby hills. It survived, but not for long.

"Fusion element! Cretaceous crush!!" A smaller meteor rained down from the sky, colliding with the Darkcrawler's softer abdomen, killing it on impact.

Leon sat down afterwards on the building, taking a breath. "Phew!"

The villagers that were in hiding came out and celebrated as they looked up seeing Leon. "Guardian! Guardian! Guardian!"

He looked down hearing these chants, smiling and waving at them. While Katrina was still off to the side, as she was unable to do much of anything.

It was this then Leon noticed something in the webbing the massive creature had spun. "Guys! We aren't done yet, hold on."

Katrina heard what Leon said and came running. "What's wrong?"

He slid down off the building as he went to the webbing. "That was a big girl. Cause we got eggs. A lot of eggs."

There's an estimated 100,000 of them, but they were all smaller than even a small bird's egg.

"This is disgusting…" She shivered just looking at it.

"Yeah...not pretty for sure. Erm...can you put a barrier around the nest? I need to light it on fire."

"Hmm? Oh yeah, I can do that." She responded.

She put a barrier around the nest but realized something in the process. "How will you get air to it?"

"Wind or air elements contain an atmospheric quality to it. So…" Leon lit the fire inside, while creating a pool of oxygen within the barrier so it spreads and destroys the highly flammable nest.

"Make the barrier oxygenated." He shrugged.

"I can't tell if you're smart at times, or if you're an idiot that had too much time on your hands."

"For you to find out, and for me to know." He said as the nest started to diminish completely.

The villagers all celebrated once again, and as Katrina finished holding a barrier around the now destroyed nest and diminished fire, they actually roped her into it too.

"Hey! He's the Guardian not me!" They had both of them being carried on a wave of hands. "Watch where you touch, or so help me your hand will be broken!"

A carrier bird landed on Leon's shoulder, he took the note off its leg carefully, before giving a gente rub to it's back before it flew away. He looked over it and the expression he had said it all.

"Sorry everyone! We need to take leave now, something major is going down." He said out loud, they put them both down as they were able to walk away afterwards.

"Ugh.." Katrina groaned. "What makes them think they can do that? Anyway...good thinking to make up a…"

"No it's not made up. Actually it's bad, people have been getting kidnapped by a dragon."

"A dragon?!"

"Yup. People are taken without a return. Which is highly concerning. Don't dragons handle their own usually?"

"Not if they've been banished."

"Greeeeat."

Thankfully the village wasn't too far away with some shortcuts on the way there. What they entered looked like a ghost town. There wasn't even one person on the streets.

"Well I'd probably be shut in too if I thought a dragon was going to snatch me." Leon said.

"You're a shut in naturally, don't pretend that you need an ulterior motive for that."

"Ok. You got me on that one I'll admit."

In an instant Leon feels himself off the ground, with his feet floating in the air. Katrina looked up in horror, as he was being whisked away by a dragon, easily the one that's been taking people away.

Leon realized once he looked above him as he squirmed.

"HELLLLLLLLLLP!" He cried out. His shoulders were too firmly gripped onto for him to actually move and grab one of his blades.

Katrina flew after them, but couldn't move as fast as the dragon ahead of her.

"You're really going to regret taking the Guardian! You got me really pissed off right now!" Leon shouted.

The dragon let out a grunt, and nothing more.

"Damn. They don't even care."

The dragon saw it was being followed, and slowed down, swinging it's long tail and catching Katrina in the process, sending her through a house.

"Katrina!"

"Are you alright?!"

"Hurting. But ok. I don't think I'll keep up with you at this rate though. I was already behind…"

"Dammit! Once it puts me down I'll hold out for as long as I can."

The dragon flew higher in altitude towards a mountain range on the opposite side of a valley that separated the village from it.

"What do you want? Have you been eating people? Were you excommunicated? Tell me…" Leon spoke with a shaking fear, he didn't want to start anything with the dragons, but realized the situation might not give him a choice.

To his surprise, the dragon actually responded. "You're the newly crowned Guardian, yes? The Earth human?" The voice was female in tone even for a dragon standard.

"Yes...that's me. What's going on here?" He asked her politely.

She stopped talking as she flew on a surprisingly wide ledge that fit her size perfectly. She gently dropped him down first as he saw two separate caverns to the right of him. As she landed in front of him, he finally got a good look at her. She has the look of a western dragon, four legs, two wings, a sleek, lean body. Her scales a deep forest green while her eyes are a pretty sky blue color.

She looked at him with guilt in her eyes. "I heard a rumor. You treat all species equally, yes?"

"I respect those who deserve it, yes. No matter the what that is you." He responded.

"I need you to kill me."

"Wait, what?! Slow it down, slowwww it down. Why?" He questioned with an obvious concern in his expression.

"I almost ate people. Even now, you look delectable to me. I...I'm setting a bad example." She looked away from Leon to the sunset on the horizon.

"A bad example..? No, don't tell me!"

"You have young kin?" He asked.

"I do. A single boy. He's in one cavern, and the humans are in the other. I...I'm sick. I ate a human a month ago. The taste was too much...I liked it."

"Well. We can help..the Dragons could…"

She cut him off. "I am a side piece of a now deceased elder dragon. I had his kin, and starved to look after him. Now, I desire humans. I've really tried but it nags at me inside. Anything else makes me hunger for humans more."

"You were exiled...weren't you?"

"By the elder he was supposed to be with, yes. So...young Guardian, will you kill me? My last request is please raise my son Helios up amongst humanity." She said sorrowfully.

"I...I'm not fit to take care of a dragon. I'm a teenager who's only looked after an iguana for like….a month. I can't handle this, I'm sorry." His speech was shaky as he fell to his knees, he was trying hard not to cry.

"What would my mother do here? If she was sick and dying, what would she say to someone, what would her wish be? I don't want to do her wrong...the Dragons won't take the little guy as it stands…I need help...another voice."

"We'll take him." Katrina walked in behind Leon and patted his shoulder. "Don't mind Leon. It's his first day officially, and Zeleon has been home for only barely over half a year."

The green dragon looked at her then to him, as she laid herself down apologetically. "I apologize for making you fret, young Leon."

He wiped his eyes, as he got himself back to his feet. "It's ok...I just...I've got a single mom who's looked after me by herself for longer than she's been single. It hit close to home. But...we'll look after him." He sniffled, he hid the fact he'd been crying quietly in front of her.

"Can we really take care of him?"

"Yes. My mother should comply, leaving three votes to one."

"Two to one. My vote doesn't count for anything."

"As Guardian you aren't just an Earth human with a farfetched goal, you're an Earth human in a position to create change."

"My name is Celia, and his father's name is Sepheron…"

Katrina cut her off in utter shock. "You mean THE Sepheron? The dragon that went to the atmosphere's edge and not only destroyed a cataclysmic meteor from striking us, but completely disintegrated it into rocks that burned away with ease?!"

"Yes..young Princess." Katrina's excitement made Celia nervous. "So please...take care of Helios, I have a feeling he's destined for something in his life...and now...Leon..you must come with me. I don't want him to see it."

"Yeah…your back this time please, dangling like that made me woozy…" He spoke nervously.

She nodded and let him on her back, soon flying away behind the mountains. She landed near a large cavern on the opposite side.

"There's a lot of caverns around here…"

"It's extinct Dugger territory, erm...I guess you could say...they were tunneling worms, rain wore away land and exposed them. But...to the issue at hand…" She walked into the depths of the cavern, where remains of a supersized dragon are.

"What was the nature of it between you two?" Leon asked.

"Our relationship? Well….he wanted out of the council, but his other wouldn't allow him to leave, thinking it would make her look bad. But he was 300 years older, and wished to be out of the circle. Only wishing to get called upon when a threat came, around that time and their infighting, he found me. From there, things happened, and his stress led to his death." She sighed.

"Well. I hope you two see each other in whatever promised land exists. You deserve that much." Leon said.

"You're...different from what I'd expect from an Earth human. I heard you were all demons."

"Eh, I'm just a demon who was gifted with humility and guilt…"

She laid her head down. "This...is odd to say. But please, do as little damage as possible. And Leon, don't sell yourself short. Those qualities are a marvel." She smiled at him while taking a deep breath, before closing her eyes. "Take care of him well. Whatever trials come...I hope he's a massive help to you."

"I'm sure he will be." He drew Silva and superheated the tip in fire, pointing it downward towards her head. "I give you peace.." He stabbed her brain directly without issue, she twitched for a moment before stopping movement completely.

"I...really killed her.."

He walked out of the cavern, and used earth in Silva, covering the opening with an RIP engraved into it.

"I'll bring you here one day, kid. So you can see where your parents are. I'll tell the truth….I only hope it's a good closure….cause this hurt me to do it...."

Leon got himself back to Katrina. Who already helped everyone out, and explained the situation.

"Is she…?"

Leon nodded.

"The villagers aren't as upset as I thought. They heard her struggles dating back two weeks. She was very distraught...you didn't do a bad thing. As much as it goes against how you feel, it wasn't bad. Now...let's see Helios."

Leon sighed. He walked into the other cavern first. In amongst what looked to be a warm nest, a small few month old dragon slept.

"He looks so peaceful…."

Helios stirred hearing Leon's movement. But didn't seem afraid of him, in fact the deep royal blue dragon came right to him. With his big, sky blue eyes like his mother's staring into his. "Friend?" He gave his little clawed foot out to Leon, as Katrina walked in behind him.

Leon teared up again, but took his foot and placed it in his hand gently, nodding to him. "Friend."