Suspicious Pink Twin-Tails (4)
"Humans age so fast, or so I thought..."
Hindrastar looked me up and down.
"How come you haven't changed a bit?"
"I've been kicking back and taking it easy for the last ten years."
"Must be nice. Meanwhile, some of us have been living through days of nothing but shame and rage."
I laughed out loud at that.
"Ten years is the blink of an eye for a dragon, isn't it? Still as dramatic as ever. Just like back then."
Hindrastar's eyes twitched.
"Anyway..."
Instead of answering, she made a show of peering over my shoulder and scanning the area around us.
"What about that yellow-haired bastard who's always glued to your side? He dead?"
"Ah, you mean Linus? The Hero who drove off Hindrastar the Disruptor Lizard?"
Her eyes twitched again.
"Far from dead. He's doing great. We even grabbed drinks together recently."
"Then why are you here alone?"
"He doesn't work here."
"He's not here?"
"That's right."
"Then where is he?"
Hindrastar kept grilling me about Linus's whereabouts.
"Honestly, I don't even know exactly where he is. All I can tell you is he's not here."
"Is that so... The yellow-haired bastard isn't here..."
She fell silent, lost in thought.
"If you're thinking of getting revenge on Linus, drop it. Don't go stirring up trouble again only to get yourself properly exterminated this time."
But Hindrastar didn't answer, as if she hadn't heard a word. Meanwhile, I took a good look at her.
A youthful, cute face. A petite figure. And those eye-catching pink twin-tails that would turn heads anywhere.
Of all the forms she could have Polymorphed into, she picked this one? Talk about unique taste.
The White Dragon Hindrastar. Also known as the Disruptor Lizard. By dragon standards she was a relatively young specimen — and throughout the entire Four-Year War, she had been an absolute nightmare for the Human Alliance. She would appear out of nowhere all across the continent-spanning front, snatching victory from battles we were about to win, cutting supply lines and leaving entire corps starving. An infuriating creature, through and through. More than a few commanders had developed nervous breakdowns and hair loss because of her.
Oddly enough, she had never actually entered combat herself. She would just show up, blast a Breath into the air, unleash the signature dragon ability Dragon Roar to throw the battlefield into chaos, and then leisurely vanish. That was the extent of it.
The first time I saw her in action — right after receiving the mission to take her down — the scene was something else. The moment Hindrastar appeared, animals and people alike scrambled to flee. Tents were trampled, rations spilled everywhere, weapons abandoned in the dirt. Just seeing a dragon's shadow was enough to send people into a panic. Add a thunderous Breath and that unique dragon howl that crushes the weak-willed with sheer terror, and it would have been weirder if anyone had stayed composed. Even in this fantasy world, dragons were extremely rare monsters, treated as half-legend.
The funny part was that the demons on the field would scatter in terror too. Whenever Hindrastar showed up, you could pretty much write that battle off as a total loss for both sides.
Imperial intelligence concluded that Hindrastar had joined the war purely for the sake of causing chaos. She operated on the Demon King's side, but never openly cooperated with his army. Whether they had even signed a contract — or if such a contract existed at all — was anyone's guess. The evidence: she kept appearing, throwing battlefields into chaos, and disappearing, over and over — but she had zero history of the kind of mass slaughter a dragon was more than capable of.
That was how Hindrastar earned the nickname Disruptor Lizard, and that was how Linus and I — freshly promoted to officers and assigned to a special task force — received the mission to take her down. After months of hopping around the entire continent until we were sick from dimensional gate travel, we got intel that Hindrastar was maneuvering to hit the rear of a retreating noble army. We nearly beat her down then and there, but she slipped away. In the process, we made acquaintance with the Duke of Toulouse, who was one of the noble army's commanders at the time.
Looking back, she probably wasn't trying to massacre the noble army. She just wanted to watch humans panic and run around like headless chickens. Fortunately, Hindrastar vanished completely after that. She never showed herself even after the war ended, so we had assumed she was either dead or holed up in her nest, hibernating.
Who would have guessed I would run into her at the Academy looking like this — pink twin-tails and all?
Why, of all possible forms, did she pick that one...?
Even as all this ran through my mind, Hindrastar just stood there, unmoving. I was getting hungry, so I spoke up first.
"Hey, you listening? Just keep your head down. Don't go poking a hornet's nest for no reason."
Hindrastar had never inflicted any direct damage, which made pinning any real crime on her incredibly difficult. If she claimed she had just been taking a stroll outside her nest and we humans had completely misunderstood her intentions, there would be nothing we could say. Worse, she could turn it around: we had caused a ruckus around her nest and should count ourselves lucky she had stopped where she did. That would be a headache.
That was why, unlike the demons and other intelligent races that had betrayed humanity and stood trial as war criminals, Hindrastar was never issued a wanted notice, never assigned a tracking team. She simply faded from the world's memory. So if she just kept her head down from now on, she could live a long, uneventful life without any trouble.
"Got it? You're smart, so you know what I mean. Yeah, Linus and I beat the hell out of you, but you're a dragon — you recovered in no time—"
"Thanks."
Hindrastar cut me off.
"Yeah, you should be grateful. What other human would give life advice to a dragon? Now that you understand, hurry back and—"
"I was worried you might've died in the meantime."
She cut me off again.
"I was worried I wouldn't get my revenge. I'm so glad you're still alive and well."
"What?"
I felt a faint current of energy begin to flow through Hindrastar's body. Aura — the kind only the most overwhelmingly powerful beings, like dragons, could wield — had activated.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me...
"You moron. You never should've told me the yellow-haired bastard isn't here."
Hindrastar slowly approached, Aura flaring around her.
"Telling your enemy that you're completely unprotected? You really are as dumb as they come."
"What are you even talking about? It's not that I'm dumb — Linus being here or not doesn't make much of a difference. And you!"
I pointed at her feet.
"Stop right there!"
Hindrastar grinned.
"Scared, are we?"
"That's not it — you're wrecking the pavement!"
The paving stones under Hindrastar's Aura-charged shoes were cracking apart. A dozen of them already. Fixing those costs money. If it were just replacing worn-out stones, fine — but this was school budget that didn't need to be spent. We already had more than enough places to dump money. Tch.
"I'll kill you right here and wipe away the humiliation of ten years ago!"
Aura danced violently around Hindrastar's shoulders. The moment I saw that, I knew talking was useless. Dragons were arrogant and stubborn. Once they set their mind on something, they saw it through to the end. And Hindrastar was a dragon who had been beaten by humans she considered insects and forced to flee. That humiliation was carved into her history. She had decided on revenge, concluded that with Linus gone she could easily take me down alone, and there was nothing in this world that could stop a dragon who had made up her mind.
I didn't particularly want to fight a dragon I no longer had any personal grudge against, but I didn't have a choice. If she reverted to her true form, this residential district would be demolished. That much was certain. When you factored in the reconstruction costs, knocking her out here was far cheaper.
And I had another thought besides that. It had occurred to me the moment I realized this "Sophie" was Hindrastar in Polymorph form. That thought being...
"Die!"
Hindrastar charged at me, shattering paving stones as she came. The density of her Aura was staggering, as you'd expect from a dragon — like an invisible wall slamming toward me. If I planted that into the ground, more paving stones would get wrecked...
In the brief instant of her charge, I made my decision. I tore her Aura apart with both hands, then seized Hindrastar by the throat.
"Ghk!?"
Caught by the neck, Hindrastar stared at me with panicked eyes.
"H-how...?"
"How what? This is the obvious outcome."
"But... you're alone...?"
I yanked her in by the throat and drove my knee into her stomach.
"Guh!"
With a short gasp, Hindrastar's body went limp.
If a human had already beaten a dragon once, whether there was one of them or two didn't really matter. Was that why she hadn't reverted to her true form? She'd figured she could kill me even while Polymorphed?
What an idiot.
I'll talk to her once she wakes up. I've got a pretty good idea. If I use this one right, she could contribute a great deal to our Academy's development.
I slung the unconscious Hindrastar over my shoulder and headed for the infirmary.