I can't help but hum happily while flying back to my Lair by myself, Mei having stuff she needed to do in the city and Himiko needing to get back to her territory. "Today was a good day," I muse aloud. "Ate a bunch. Got rid of someone threatening my Hoard. Reunited with the first of my Hoard and ensured they have their proper marks and calling cards." I nod. "Definitely a good day."
Since it's obviously a good day, I'm definitely not going to stupid enough to say 'nothing can ruin today'. That's literally asking for something to ruin it! No, I'll keep my mouth shut, head back, and maybe catch up on some of what I missed while I was asleep…
Unfortunately, it seems that the mere act of having a great day is enough for something to barge in and ruin it, because as I get closer to my Lair an unfamiliar smell starts to fill my nose It's not a human with a flying quirk who flew by, the scent is too strong for that. In fact, it doesn't smell human at all. No… this smell… It smells like me.
I smell a dragon.
And they've invited themselves to my Lair!
I'm immediately flooded with rage at the insult against me, not even pausing to think about the fact that this is the first time I'll even be encountering another of my kind. No, as I transform to my full draconic form, I'm filled with nothing but the burning need to rip this interloper to pieces!
I crash down in front of the entrance leading into my Lair, my rage diminishing at the sight of the small form leaning calmly against the wall next to my Lair's entrance, her arms crossed. Diminished, however, does not mean vanished.
My maw opens and before the intruder can so much as open her mouth she's bathed in the roar of my emerald flames, the heat great enough that the wall and floor of the entire cliff starts to melt, molten stone flowing around my slowly sinking feet. I hold the roar for multiple minutes, determined to teach some manners to the one who dared intrude while I was away. But when I finally cut off the flames, the other dragon is still exactly where she was when I started, utterly unmoved and unaffected by my flames despite having sunk up to her knees into the slag that now makes up the floor she stands upon.
She raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "Was that it?" She asks in her childish voice, for she does indeed have the form of a child. "Wow, you really are a newborn, aren't you?" I growl at her, but with much of my anger put into my initial attack I can think more clearly, and what my senses are telling me…
She's old. Far older than me. And her power has clearly only grown with what she's experienced through the years - no, the decades.
She could squish me like a human, and there'd be absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Still, I can't help but continue to growl at her as I lower my head in deference, slowly reverting to my humanoid form to more easily communicate. It may be petty, but I take a bit of satisfaction from the fact that, even with her pulling her legs out of the slag to stand firmly upon solid ground once more, I'm still far taller than her. And my boobs are bigger too, so ha!
Seemingly reading my mind, the elder in the body of a child shoots me a glare, causing me to shudder and hunch in on myself in a habit I thought I'd long abandoned. I immediately realize it, though, and straighten my back right away, shrugging my shoulders to throw off the moment of weakness. I won't go back to that, I can't go back to that. I'm not weak, I'm strong! I'm strong…
Her harsh look softens at my actions and she sighs, reaching up to rub at the bridge of her nose. "Damn, you really are a newborn, aren't you. How old were you when you Awakened? And how old are you now?"
"N-nine," I hate how my voice cracks. I'm not afraid, I'm not weak. I'm strong now! I'm strong! "A-and twe- no," I flinch at messing up and hate myself for it. "I sl-slept for t-two years so now I-I'm fo-fourteen." No, damnit! I'm strong! I know I'm strong so why am I stuttering!? I know I'm strong… I'm supposed to be strong now…
The girl winces, before looking at me with pity, and I hate it. I hate pity. Everyone always looked at me with those eyes before… Pity or disgust, the only ones who didn't are the first of my Hoard, my most precious. They never looked at me like that, there was only kindness and understanding in their eyes… I hate it.
"You poor girl," she steps towards me and I instinctively take a step back before forcing myself to take two forward. I'm not scared… I'm not! I'm strong now! Stronger than before I fell asleep! I know it!
The closer she moves towards me, the bigger she seems to get. I'm sure it's my imagination, but I still have to hold back the shudders that crawl down my spine, stop the bile from creeping up my throat. I hate this. I hate feeling like I did back then. But she's much, much stronger than me. She invaded my Lair, and there's nothing I could have done to prevent it, even if I had been here. She's better than me in every way that matters, and I hate it. I hate how it makes me feel.
I hate how she wraps her arms around me and pulls me into a hug, my head resting against her chest as tears of frustration start to leak from my eyes. I hate it. Why did she have to show up? I would have been perfectly happy never knowing how weak I am compared to other dragons. I would have been perfectly happy lording my minuscule strength over the humans, glorying in how I'm untouchable to them.
Instead, this girl is here. She's made sure I know how weak I am.
I hate it.
`~`
Haley Long, Eldest Dragon, can't help but feel guilty at how she decided to meet the newest addition to her race. She'd come to wait for the newborn's return at her Lair fully expecting them to strike at her with the full righteous fury that any dragon would have at seeing their Lair, their sanctuary, their home intruded upon.
That she'd gotten as expected. But bathed in the newborn's flames, she could feel all the emotions she'd put into them. They were filled with rage, with the desire to protect her Lair, as expected. What she didn't expect was for both emotions to be vastly overpowered by a different one.
The newborn's flames were filled with fear from the moment they first flowed, and despair by the time she cut them off.
Even despite what she felt, though, she still snapped at her when she obviously compared the sizes of their chests. It's something that's happened every time she's met a female newborn, and despite knowing that their humanoid forms can be changed at a dragon's whim, she still gets annoyed by it. Something that this one certainly could have done without, given what happened next.
All it had taken was a glare before her form started to shift, slowly becoming smaller, a sign that a dragon is shifting subconsciously. And when she learned her age, her heart broke for the newborn.
A dragon can only fully Awaken when they abandon their humanity, yes, but that's not the only aspect that's necessary, nor is it an easy thing to do. Even she only abandoned her humanity when she'd passed her hundredth birthday.
And the event which caused it ignited her immense hatred for the species known as humanity to immense heights, which has only gained strength in the last two hundred years that 'quirks' have existed.
Every dragon that has Awakened after her has done so no earlier than the age of fifty, with the oldest having been sixty nine.
No, merely abandoning your humanity is not enough to fully awaken. In order for a dragon to fully awaken, one must not only abandon their humanity, they must discard the very concept that they are the same as humans. They must view themselves as an entirely different species from humans, to view themselves as something other. They must take one look at humanity and think to themselves: I am not one of them, I refuse to be one of them.
If things were as simple as most would hope, this feeling would be felt only by those who look at the horrors that humanity regularly visits upon each other and feel only disgust, feel relief in the knowledge that they would never do what humans do with such casual cruelty. But as quirks gained prominence, she found that the opposite would also hold true. After speaking with two of the newborns, she'd come to a realization.
To fully Awaken, one can also feel that they are less - or much more rarely, more - than human.
The two she'd met before had grown up when the scales were tipping in the favor of those with quirks, resulting in the persecution of those without. They saw their families killed for the crimes of having living relatives who were not 'blessed' in the same way as them, and they were filled with rage. The belief that they were less than human was beaten into them with disgusting frequency, and their flames of resentment only burned brighter. To the point where they fully accepted that to be human became synonymous with having a quirk. To not have a quirk was to not be human. They accepted this, and they were proud that they were 'less than human'.
They Awakened, and they showed the world the rage those 'less than human' have towards humanity.
She'd needed to fight them, in order to force them to halt their indiscriminate slaughter of the world. She has no love of humans, she hates them with a passion, but she keeps her disregard for their lives to her own territory. These two would have burned the world to ashes… and laughed even as they were consumed in the flames themselves.
They have calmed, now, though they now refuse the world that had refused them in turn. They isolate themselves, doing the bare minimum to keep themselves from starving, but they hold no interest beyond the sanctuaries they formed in the wildest parts of the world, far from the reach of any human.
She'd come here with one of two expectations: a monster in dragon form wishing to slaughter the world, one with a vicious cunning, eager to use the organization meant to appease the dragons in a futile effort to preserve humanity from their anger. In that case, she'd come prepared to fight, to carve the lesson into their scales.
The other was a naive fool who blindly trusted what they used to be, unbelieving that those who exist to 'help' dragons could have bad intentions towards them.
She got neither, instead she got what is currently wrapped in her arms, sobbing loudly into her dress. The newborn she has come to meet is not a vicious and vindictive being set on seeing the world pay for the crimes committed upon them. Neither are they innocent, stumbling upon their Awakening by mere happenstance and fickle emotions. No, the appearance the newborn has reverted to is a perfect picture of what she truly is.
The newborn Haley Long has come to educate in the country of Japan is nothing more than a terrified child, one desperate for the safety she should have been promised, that she was owed, and yet it was denied.
Haley Long holds the crying child smaller than even her in her embrace, and she laments that she has torn the illusion of security from her eyes in the worst way possible.