[b][u][center]A Modern Dragon Harem Chapter 8: What Do You Want? Sponsored by GlynWolf By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b] Sex was wonderful, but there was only so long that one could keep doing it, even in vixen form. Draconicon shook his head as Anya’s body finally dropped, no longer able to keep up with the shameless needs that the musk had been giving her. He tucked her into the ranger bed after wiping up her pussy, hoping that it would be enough to keep her from drenching the sheets while she slept off the long fuck. He put the spell back on his dick to keep it from making more musk, wiped himself down with a spare blanket, and pulled his robe back on. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world – and he would really have to start thinking about how he wrote how Drac was dressed in the future – but it did the job of hiding him. As he stepped back into the main room, the first thing he noticed was that Janet was there and Veronica was not. The second thing he noticed was that Janet was cuffed to a seat, able to watch the door to the forest outside, able to wobble over to knock on the bedroom door, but not able to get up and call to anyone. The black woman looked at him nonplussed, and he shook his head. “Still doesn’t trust you, does she?” “Apparently not,” Janet said through gritted teeth. “Any chance you have the key?” “Only if she hid it somewhere. Where’d she go?” “Something about checking the perimeter.” “Call yourself a security guard?” “Hey, I’m dealing with Spunk the Magic Dragon here, and his Wonder-Pussy Vixen, from everything that I was hearing. Oh, and let’s not forget Herself, eh? Where the hell did she even keep those handcuffs, anyway?” “I’ve stopped asking.” “Couldn’t you magic me out of them?” “I’m trying not to experiment too much with magic right at the moment. I’d prefer not to blow your hands off your arms. Besides, I can’t imagine that she’ll be gone long.” The dragon hoped not, anyway. For all that he was the one that needed to keep in contact with Veronica, Tobias, and Victoria, they weren’t always great at keeping him informed about what was happening with them. The fact that they’d just run off to check the security of the hut shouldn’t have surprised him, but when it came right down to it… He sighed, rubbing his eyes as he sat down beside the human. Janet continued to grumble, but he just fixed his eyes on the window and watched the world. With Anya asleep, and nothing else needing solving at the moment, he was pretty sure that it was time for him to think. [i]What do you want?[/i] Draconicon pulled his phone out of his pocket, looking at the notification of that message again. It had come in just before Veronica’s call the day before, and he knew that it had to mean something. Something bad, probably, but something. He put his phone done against his leg. There’d be no messages out here, not without a signal. Hell, even if there was, he wouldn’t want to answer it. The last thing that they needed was for one of their devices to pin down where they were. That reminded him. “Janet?” “Yeah?” “You have your phone on you, still?” “…No?” “Janet.” “Ugh. Front-right pocket.” She leaned her leg toward him, and he rooted around in the pocket until he found her phone. He flicked it open, surprised that it had no pin or password protection, and turned it to airplane mode. He put it back on her lap, shaking his head. “Thanks. Now, if only it had a swiss army knife function…” “Trust me. This is for the best right now.” “I’m starting to think that car bomb was a sign of things to come.” “More than you know. More than you know.” He hoped that it was just some sort of paranoid government agency, because if it wasn’t, then this particular story could get very interesting, very quickly. After all, Draconicon had come to him. The real Draconicon, not just the guy that the human had become. The dragon had offered him the chance to write his own story, to be something better, to [i]do[/i] something better with his life. He remembered how he had been trusted to do something, to finish it. That meant that Draconicon had come from a different world, reached through various barriers to give him the energy that he needed to change things. That, in turn, meant that there’d be a counter-balance, a counter-force in the other worlds, and they wouldn’t be so happy about someone else interfering. [i]Guess I was more accurate when I wrote an interfering Drac rather than a hands-off Drac,[/i] he thought, tapping his finger on his thigh. [i]But what do the other guys want?[/i] That was the question, and he doubted that he was going to get an answer staring into the distance. If there was such a force – and this was such a thing tied up in narrative tropes that he couldn’t help but believe that there was – then what did they want? If Drac was an interfering force, then they would probably be the one that wanted to keep the status quo, the ones that wanted to ensure that the world stayed on the right track. If that was the case, then anything that he did to start fucking with the world would be something they’d oppose. They’d start taking steps to ensure that the humans had a way of turning back to normal, that they’d be able to go back and forget that he had ever started messing with them. Of course, that was if there was such a force out there, and if they had done the car bombing in the first place, but… The dragon grumbled, rubbing his face. This was not the sort of story that he had imagined for himself when he had gotten this body. He had hoped for something more like an adventure, something kinky, something silly, something fun. And now, he’d been landed with a massive amount of paranoia and responsibility. He was starting to feel a serious kinship with how Veronica and the rest must think all the time. “Does she do this often?” “Which one? Herself, or the Wonder-Vixen?” he asked. “Herself.” “She likes to make sure that everything is safe. Sometimes, I think she overdoes it, but I trust her judgment. She’s right a lot more often than she’s wrong.” “And the Wonder-Vixen?” “Let’s just say that the new shape is fitting for the stuff she wants to do.” “What a surprise…” “Hey, I don’t turn people into this. I just…give them the freedom to indulge.” “Considering the mark on my back…” Draconicon sighed, rubbing his face again. The brand on the small of her back wasn’t something that he was keen on remembering. It had been a mistake, something that was completely unintentional, but he knew that it was going to be held against him until the day that he died. There was no way that the other woman was going to forgive him for marking her like that. And he supposed she shouldn’t have to. He had changed her life, dragged her down a rabbit hole, and now, she was a prisoner in the ranger station. She hadn’t exactly asked for this. The old image of a man in sunglasses saying the same thing popped into his head, and he chuckled. Shaking his head, he got to his feet, walking to the cabin doorway. There wasn’t much to see beyond a wood trail that led out to the road some way off. The road itself was completely invisible from the cabin door, but the path was not. It was long and winding, and he couldn’t see anyone out there. The trees and the bushes swallowed up everything, from sight to sound. So, he supposed it wasn’t too surprising when Veronica managed to sneak up on him. She grabbed him by the tail, then stepped into view. “You’re sloppy. I could have been an enemy.” “Could have been, but weren’t.” “Drac.” “I know, I know. I need to be careful, and I will be.” She nodded, pointing at him with a silent reminder. He wasn’t allowed to just [i]go.[/i] She was there to protect him. They were there to protect him. As Veronica stepped back into the hut, he followed, shutting the door behind her. “So, are you going to let her loose?” he asked. “Yes. We’re all here now.” “What will it take for you to start to trust her?” “More than this.” “Should I make it an order?” “…Tempting, but no,” she said as she undid the handcuffs. “As…helpful…as that would be, taking free will is bad. Very. Bad. She doesn’t deserve that.” “I’m here, you know,” Janet said, shaking her head. “Why do I have to keep reminding you people of that?” “Sorry.” Draconicon helped her out of the chair once the handcuffs were off, shaking his head. She was not best-pleased, but she was less angry than she might have been a few days ago. He imagined that she was starting to settle into the weirdness of everything, whether she wanted to or not. [i]What do you want?[/i] The question was still bugging him, and not just for the implications of who might have sent it. It was more of a question for him, at that point, and he didn’t really have an answer. He knew that he wanted to make things better. That part hadn’t changed. He had been writing stories for a long time, giving people sex and pleasure to get them to not think about the bad things in the world for a while, and he had done more than that for those that had been willing to work with him. He remembered that there were great sagas that he had put together, adventures that would give some people hope. And yet, for all that, it had done so little in the grand scheme of things. He had power, now, power and magic and…and more that he could bring to bear against the bad things in the world. It could start to change. It could start being better for everyone involved. But did he want it bad enough to chase after it? [i]It’d be a lot of work,[/i] he thought, thinking of how the world had gone to hell for the last few years. Everything had gotten worse. Everyone was depressed, everyone was angry. They all wanted a way out, wanted a way for things to be better without them having to be the ones to put in the effort. Old people blamed young people, young people blamed the old, and… The fighting had been going on for so long. People were tired. People wanted a chance to stop, but nobody could back down. The ones that were in the wrong wanted to keep things the way that they were, where they were getting everything and all the others were getting nothing. The ones that were deprived wanted to fight and change things, and couldn’t afford to settle down, not when it meant giving up what little things that they still had left. There was no chance of giving in now, not when it meant that survival was on the line. He had power. He had something that nobody else in the world had. Magic was a tool that the world had long-since forgotten, if it had ever known it in the first place, and he knew that there were ways of breaking the laws of physics to make the world better for those that lived in it. He just had to figure out how. [i]Magic can make things easier,[/i] he thought, looking down at his hands. [i]It can also make things harder.[/i] “Hey, when you’re done brooding, mind filling us in what you’re thinking about?” Janet asked. “Hmm?” “You were brooding. Hand-staring and everything.” “He usually does that in front of a computer,” Veronica said. “He does it a lot?” “He lives in his head.” “That’d be lonely.” “For most people,” Veronica admitted. Draconicon shook his head at the pair of them, taking the seat that Janet had vacated. She seemed to be more inclined to stand up, for the moment, and she was keeping a bit of distance from Veronica, too. Probably trying to keep from getting chained to another chair when she wasn’t looking. He half-wondered how she’d gotten cuffed to the first chair in the first place. Not that it mattered. He sat down, sighing. “Okay. I need to know something. Veronica, I already know your answer, but Janet…this is important, so please be honest. That’s an order.” She grumbled as she glared at him, but nodded. “With magic, there’s a chance to make the world better. I can…do things, as you both know. I just need to figure out how it works properly so that it doesn’t keep screwing with us as much as it does with the world at large. But when I figure that out…” “You’ll change things.” He nodded at her statement. “I will. I will change everything that is pulling people down. I can do it. I just…I need to figure out how. I need to make sure that I do it right. I need to make sure that I don’t turn myself into another dictator.” “You won’t. You [i]won’t.” Veronica was as insistent on that as ever. Their many conversations had always labeled him as good. She’d never stopped insisting that he was a good person, that there was something about him that would stay good. He hoped that she was right; he’d never been granted this level of power before, and the idea of wielding it continuously, working with it over and over again to change the world… Well, it wasn’t exactly free of nerves. He shivered as he imagined what he would do with that sort of power to someone that made him angry. That…that was always a good test, he was realizing. [i]When you think about having power, if you want to find out what sort of person you are, think about what you would do with that power if someone made you angry. Or if someone scared you. Or if someone took something that belonged to you. What would you do with the power, then? What would you do if they defied you, whether or not they knew what you could do? How would you respond? How would you treat them?[/i] And it was those questions that told him that he wasn’t quite on the road to corruption yet. He flinched back from the worst of the things that his mind brought to bear, and he knew that he had a chance to stay a good man. A good man for a while longer, yet, as long as he didn’t make too many stupid mistakes. As long as he didn’t get too angry. His hands clenched a few times, and he shook his head. “I need to start figuring this out. Tobias?” There was a slight shift in her facial features, things going slightly flatter, Tobias’s gaze always slightly less open-eyed than Veronica’s was. “Yes?” “Do you have the couplets for me to help you into your proper shapes, yet?” “It’s…almost done. We could do it now…but I do not want to risk it going wrong. We did not mean to transform Nic when she arrived; that was a mistake.” “As long as you’re not beating yourself up on that mistake.” “No. We are learning.” “Then I’ll wait. You tell me as soon as you have the couplet ready, though. I want to make sure that you get what you need. Janet.” He turned back to the security guard. She arched an eyebrow at him, crossing her arms under her chest. “What?” “I need to know. Are you willing to come along for this?” “Drac –” “I know what you’re going to say, Veronica,” he said, shaking his head but not taking his eyes off Janet. “I know that you said that she can’t just leave, that we need to do something to make sure that she doesn’t cause problems if she does. But I have to hear it from her. Janet.” “…” “Do you want to stay?” “…I don’t know.” “You know what I want to do.” “No, that’s the thing. I don’t. I don’t know what you are going to do. All I’ve seen is you cast weird magic, almost get blown up, and fuck people. I don’t [i]know[/i] what you want.” “Then let me tell you. It’s…kind of me telling myself, too.” Draconicon looked out the window. The mountain’s baring top was another reminder of how far they’d gone in the last few years, how things had changed, how the world had started to speed up towards an end that they just weren’t ready for. They had time to turn it back, but it had to be done now. [i]I can’t afford to be afraid,[/i] he thought. [i]I can’t afford to think what-if. If I have the chance to fix it, then I [b]have[/b] to. Nobody else is able to try.[/i] “I want to make the world better.” “You already said that.” “I want to make the world better, and I want to do that by listening to the people at the bottom,” he said. “I want to hear what is wrong with their lives. I want to hear the people that can’t make ends meet. I want to hear the people that are starving. I want to hear the people that can’t make it in life, whose brains are against them as much as society is. I want to hear from everyone that has struggled with life, who has been kicked down, who hasn’t been able to dig their way out of a hole. “And then I want to hear from the people that have dug their way out, but can’t get away. Those people that have grabbed the fence around the hole but can’t hop out. I want to hear what’s stopping them, and fix it. I want to do everything that I can for them. “I want to start at the bottom and work my way up. Fix things for people. I want people to have everything that they need to survive.” He flexed his hands into fists. “I have fucking magic. I can make food out of nothing. I can build homes faster than any construction crew. I can find a way to make energy for those homes.” “I reject your reality and substitute my own,” Veronica quoted. “Yes. Yes!” Draconicon nodded. “That’s it. That’s exactly it. Why the hell do we have to live in a world of their rules when we can live in a world of ours? When we can live in a world that’s better, when the world doesn’t have to be this way, why not push back? When we finally have a tool that fucking works, why not fucking push back?” Through it all, Janet just stared at him. Not wide-eyed, not angry, not even excited or judging. Instead, she just stared, her eyes half-shut, her mouth flat. When he eventually stopped, she sighed. “First time I’ve heard someone say that off the internet.” “Well, it’s time that we stop just saying it and do something.” “You say a lot of good things…” “But?” “But I can’t forget that,” she said, pointing at the small of her back. “It was an accident. A horrible one, and I can’t apologize enough for it. But that’s not the sort of state that I’m going to set up. I’m not looking to be master of everyone.” “Just the master of the harem,” Janet grumbled. “Not even that. I want a world that can be better, and in order to make it better, I need people close to me to tell me what to fix. I have the power, I have the determination…but I don’t have the facts. I need people like Veronica, like Anya, like you, to give me those. I need to know where to start.” “…You’ll listen to me? You promise?” “Ha!” It was clear immediately who was laughing. He chuckled as he heard and saw Victoria come out, complete with her Aussie accent. “Listen? Hun, that’s what he does all the time. I guarantee ya that he remembers everything you’ve said ever since you met.” “Not that long ago,” Janet muttered. “Anyone could remember that.” “Actually…” Draconicon rubbed the back of his head. “I remember when I first moved into that apartment. You were around quite a bit, and you were regularly muttering about the way that people didn’t close the stairwell doors. That there were always messes down there. That you and the other guards were having to be janitors instead of security guards. So, I, uh…I got some people to start sweeping and mopping. Some of the more responsible guests.” “…That was you?” He nodded. “Why?” “Seemed the right thing to do. I mean, it’d be dangerous enough for us in the stairwell, if it was that messy, and if it was keeping you guys from doing your job and getting you that angry…” “…” “Told ya. He listens,” Victoria said with a chuckle. “Apparently.” Janet rubbed the back of her head. “Alright…if you are really going to listen…” “I am.” “Then I’ll stay with you. But you need to tell me about what the fuck’s going on. I mean, I get the basics up to now, I guess, but…what the fuck else is going to happen? Who else is going to join our little…freakshow?” “We haven’t decided that yet, but we’re figuring that out.” “We’ll have a number later,” Veronica said. “For now –” Bzzzt, bzzzt. Draconicon blinked, picking up his phone. It buzzed a second time, and he saw a new text notice come in. Not from Ide or any of the other friends he had, either, but from an unknown number. Dreading what he was going to see, he flicked it open, and there it was. The same silhouette from before. This time, there were two new message notifications from the same mystery sender. [i]You want a dream.[/i] That was the first one. Somehow, he’d been listened to. Somehow, there was someone else out there, someone that was paying attention, and someone that could listen in on him from impossible distances. [i]You have one chance to stop.[/i] That was the second message, and he shook his head. He turned the airplane mode function on with the phone, looking up at his companions. Turning the phone around, he let them take a look. “We’re not alone,” he said. “How the hell…that’s impossible,” Janet said. “Impossible as a dragon putting his mark on your back?” Veronica asked. “Well, not that impossible, but…Ugh.” And as if they wanted to make it even worse, the airplane mode seemed to go ignored as a final buzz hit his phone. They all saw the notification appear at the same time, and they all leaned over to read it. [i]You are one against many. You have the first move.[/i] Draconicon put the phone down, shaking his head as he imagined what that was supposed to mean. The first move. Was this some game of chess to the people out there? Were they just seeing this as a way to play with him? Or were they trying to fuck with him? That was possible. He knew that there was every possibility that someone out there had better tech than the government admitted it owned. There was every possibility that this was a mundane government agency that just had a better sort of technological edge than they did. But there was the possibility that this was extra-dimensional, too. If the real Drac had left him here as a chance to start building on his own life, using powers that this world no longer had, then the other side was playing against the black dragon. The real Drac had almost nothing to work with right now… But if this was a game of chess, it was a game of chess with very different rules. Unlike a real game, losing a piece didn’t mean that their side was diminished forever. They had a chance to convert others, to bring them into the fold, to change the rules and make it better. [i]I have magic,[/i] he reminded himself. [i]That magic…it has rules, but it has different rules than the rest of this reality. If I get good enough at it…if I can learn all that there is about how it works…then I can reject this reality and substitute my own. A better reality. A gentler one. One that cares instead of crushes.[/i] That was his hope. And he was relying on the others to help keep him on that straight and narrow path. Power corrupted, after all, and he had far more potential for power than anyone in history. “I need you to help me with this. Anya, too, when she wakes up. She’s going to take a while to settle to the idea that this is going to be a fight, but…” “You always have us,” Veronica said. “And yeah…guess you have me, too,” Janet added, shaking her head. “But I’m staying human for as long as I can,” she added. “That’s fine. Nobody has to change with me.” There were many possibilities for helping people. A physical transformation was only the start of the possibilities and chances that he offered people. He remembered the stories that he’d written of Draconicon trying to make life better by fucking it into people, but…yeah, that wasn’t what he was doing here. But he did need help. Friends. There was a small circle of those that they could draw from, people that would be willing to be at his side. There were those that knew what struggling was like, and there were those that would be more than willing to take on a more…interesting shape, in order to do what they could in their imagination. He looked at his phone. For all that they were trying to go off the grid, they hadn’t ditched the people that had probably set the car bomb in the first place. However, there was no telling whether they’d lost the rest of any law enforcement that might have been watching. There was no reason to go running from the ranger station or break radio silence just yet. “Veronica?” “Hmm?” “How much do you know about setting up secure communications?” “Enough to know it’ll be nearly impossible out here.” “Further down the mountain, at one of the hotels?” “Maybe.” “Alright. Tomorrow morning, I want you and Janet to head down there and start setting things up. Add a spell onto the couplet development list for teleporting me down to the hotel that you pick, and I’ll meet you there with Anya afterward,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll keep the messages short, and then figure out where to hide next.” “Great. Another road trip,” Janet grumbled. “It’s better than being a sitting duck.” All the while, he wondered what sort of actions he could take without qualifying as having made the first move. He had already transformed one human being, turning her from human to vixen, and that wasn’t considered an affront to this reality just yet. If that was the case, then it was possible that changing Veronica and the others into their proper forms might not count, either, let alone the other guys that were waiting to be snapped up. But if it did, then he would need to make sure to be careful about it. Would it count as a move if he transformed them one by one, doing little changes at a time up until too many people had been transformed to hide? Or would it be better to do it all at once, pushing forward to make sure that everyone he needed had the right body? There were too many different questions to answer, and none of them liked moving forward without more information, but that was all that they had. Draconicon sighed. “You guys do what you want for now. I need a bit of fresh air.” “Keep to that side of the cabin,” Veronica said, pointing out the window. “I can watch from here.” “Sure, no problem.” “I’m going to get a nap,” Janet said, going to the bedroom door. “I need to try and figure out the weirdness.” He nodded, waiting for her to open the door and step inside. As soon as she had, the remaining musk inside hit her, and she gasped, groaning and sliding against the wall. “Fuuuuuuu –” Thump. He shut the door behind her, shaking his head. Veronica looked at him and rolled her eyes. “What?” “You and…that.” “To be fair, I didn’t pick to have that this time.” “No, but you knew what she was walking into.” “I know how stupid this is going to sound, but she [i]does[/i] need to loosen up a little bit. She’s so uptight and scared, and this…well, Anya’s too harmless to hurt her. She’ll just end up enjoying herself for a while.” “…” “I’m not going to take advantage.” “I know. Walk.” “I’m going.” The dragon did just that, walking out of the ranger station and staying in sight. He appreciated the fresh air and the sunlight, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still being watched. [b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]