Doug sent Zoey a text near the end of the day telling her he was just asking a teacher some questions about an assignment, and that he would be out soon. She waited by his car for a few minutes, and then told him she was going for a walk in the slightly wooded area beside the school, eager to get home and sleep off all this stress, if she could. She was just too jittery to keep standing around, and regretted having an extra large iced cappuccino on her lunch break. Part of the jitters was possibly nerves, as it always seemed to sneak up on her when she was alone with her thoughts, but the rest was pure caffeine. It seemed like everything just kept coming at her, well, at all of them. She remembered something Ferris had said earlier, when she puked after flying, he told her that she wasn’t adjusting as well as the others had. She had only thrown up once previous to that, and if she had to again she might just aim for his shoes. She snickered at that thought, before hearing someone behind her.

“Why are you laughing to yourself in the woods?” Dominic asked, sounding a little concerned. He seemed to like to sneak up behind people, much to Zoey’s annoyance. She puffed out her cheeks and then let out a sigh, ears flushing at being caught, but also in anger.

“Why are you even talking to me? Doug isn’t around, you can’t murder anyone.” She spat, wishing she had his helmet still, to give him a nice bruise to one of his shins. After all, it wasn’t like he could wear armor to school… probably.

“That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m trying to convince you guys-you regular, non-dragon guys- that hanging around people like that are dangerous.” He tried, sounding really sincere, but still, about murder, so she couldn’t really sympathize with him.

“And, I’m not convinced. So stop following me. I have other bad guys to deal with right now.” She kept walking. She heard his footsteps stop, then rush to catch up to her.

“I’M NOT A BAD GUY!” he insisted, waving his hands. She shot him a look of disbelief.

“That kind of sounds like what most bad guys say. Also, you don’t feel a little bit bad about this? You were friends with them until this happened.” She asked, trying to appeal to his morality.

“They sent me here specifically because of the magical activity. I knew that it could be anyone. It’s sad that I found them, for you, I guess. But it’s my job, Zoey.” He sounded hurt, but honest. This made her angrier.

“You came here just to kill people, you’re even worse than I thought.” She snarled, voice rising. He turned defensive as well.

“Not people! Dangerous creatures!” he yelled, balling up his fists. They had continued by this point, so they were a bit of a ways from the school. Zoey hoped none of the remaining students could hear them yelling. It wasn’t exactly the best place to be screaming about these things.

“People! People! Ignore it all you want, but you don’t know a thing about them, so you don’t get to talk about any of it. You don’t even know what’s going on in this town.” She yelled back, accusatory. If he was going to raise his voice about this, then so was she.

He was taken aback by this, but he had to admit, silently, that he didn’t know their past, or ‘what was going on in the town’. “Enlighten me then, if you’re so smart.” He countered, crossing his arms.

She breathed out so hard a bit of her hair moved, opening her mouth to reply snarkily, but then she stopped, grabbing Dominic by the arm and pulling him back towards the school quickly. “That’s what you don’t know!” She pointed at a couple of cars with the name ‘JARGON’ emblazoned across them, and the business-casual dressed people exiting them.

“W-what do you mean?” He asked, startled and not understanding. He wasn’t running all that fast, confused. He began to pull back from her, towards the people, but not liking that Zoey was dragging him somewhere.

“You want to be a dragon? RUN LIKE YOU MEAN IT!” She demanded, falling back just to give his back a shove forward before taking off like a dart. With this, he started running faster, but as they got closer to the school, he fell, feeling his teeth click and chin hit the ground before realizing they had used a metallic lasso type of machine to ensnare his feet. Zoey stopped running, clearly conflicted, if only for a moment. She headed back towards Dominic, who was looking more and more concerned as the machine began to crank and rattle, withdrawing the rope, attached to Dominic. If this was less of a terrifying moment, Zoey might have pointed out the similarities to Doug’s near-kidnapping, but she kept quiet. Dominic rolled over, sliding his book bag off his shoulders, opening it, and pulling out a dagger that Zoey was shocked silent he had managed to hide so well. He took a few swipes at the cord, looking increasingly nervous as the blade bounced off with a clang.

“Okay, okay, we need help, we need help.” Zoey started babbling, and Dominic seemed to remember she was there, glancing up, and then at the approaching JARGON workers.

“Zoey, you need to run, I’ll be fine. Just run!” He pleaded, taking another swipe at the cord with mounting anxiety.

“You won’t be fine, Dominic, you’ll be dead! We need a dragon, oh we need a dragon…” she murmured to herself, backing away reluctantly from Dominic as the workers began to close the gap between them. She remembered what Oscar had mentioned about screaming, and wondered if she was close enough to the school for Doug to hear. Decidedly, it was the best option she had at that point, other than asking Dominic if he had a spare blade she could use to stab away at them. If she didn’t act soon, Dominic was going to be in real trouble, as she could still get away, but that would leave him in danger. Pausing, she looked the closest worker directly in the eye, and hoped this was close enough to the school so she’d look cool.

“Eat shit.” She told them, glaring, before letting out an ear piercing shriek.

Doug had been packing up his backpack, and chatting with Ferris and Rebecca, having cleared up any confusion he had about the assignment with the teacher. That was before Zoey screamed, however. After that, Ferris got halfway through remarking, “That sounded a lot like Zoey.” Before catching Doug’s backpack in one hand, his friend already bolting to the first classroom he saw, luckily already cleared out. Doug snapped the locks placed on the windows as he threw it open, barreling out, and landing with a roll. Ferris and Rebecca prayed nobody saw that and dashed as innocently as they could towards an actual exit. 

Doug, on the other hand, was still racing through the woods next to the school at a full sprint, hands curled into claws, straining to not transform right there. Luckily, he could still hear her shriek every few seconds, so he knew he was headed in the right direction. When he burst through the trees to the opening close enough to the road, his eyes caught the cars and their logo’s first, but they didn’t even show a reaction. He was scanning the chaos for something else, even overlooking Dominic being dragged across the ground. That is, until he saw Zoey, waving a dead tree branch at one of the JARGON workers, and screaming at the top of her lungs.

“I seriously need to get a weapon of some sort, and stop relying on the trees around me!” she wailed, narrowly avoiding capture.

Doug sped over, ducking and grabbing the worker around the waist, throwing them as far as he could away from them both. After giving her a quick look over, making sure she was uninjured, he felt like he could actually see properly again. He spun on his heels and grew a huge tree at the same time, bringing it smashing down on the machine reeling Dominic in, causing it to sputter and smoke until it stopped. To the other workers, he entwined them in vines and tied them up together, off to one side, trying to catch their weapons with his vines and pull them away, but having the vines get caught and slashed persistently.

Dominic, with some slack finally applied to the chains on his legs, was working his way out of them carefully, as if they might spring back to life, and giving Doug confused and concerned glances every few seconds.

Zoey was still holding her stick defensively, until vines shot out from seemingly no-where and snatched it away, right before whipping across Doug’s chest. To Zoey’s aghast horror, the vines left deep slashes, as they were covered in inch-long thorns. She had never seen Doug use vines with thorns attached to them, and he seemed to be taken aback by them as well.

Doug scanned the crowd of workers as if looking for who was behind the vines, all the while giving up on trying to contain them, looping a vine around Dominic instead and pulling him backwards until he reached Zoey’s feet and could be helped up. The workers hacked their way easily out of his constraints without his interference, but none of them seemed to be behind the attack he just received. He touched the scratches and then glanced at his hand, as if checking how badly he was bleeding. He took a few steps to the side, placing himself in front of Dominic and Zoey, although he didn’t know that the attacker was in front of him until they opened the door of one of the JARGON cars.

Ms.Kistle stepped out, smirking. “Long time no see, Zoey, Doug. I thought this would be an easy mission for us, but then you had to get involved, yet again.” She shook her head, more in amusement than anything. “Notice anything different?”

“You’re even more of an asshole.” Zoey spat, pulling Dominic back behind her, despite not having any weapons on her. “Dom, run. This is literally the person who abducted and interrogated me.” She warned, not turning her head away from Kistle.

“To be fair I was not the one to take you from your house, Zoey. My work was in the laboratory. But, ignoring your prior remark, as you can see, I can take a much more hands on approach to my work now.” Ms.Kistle told them menacingly, putting her wrists to her hips in a pose that would make Karver proud.

“Well, to be honest with you, I don’t really care if you were the exact person to kidnap me, thanks. You’re still evil.” Zoey snapped, taking a step back and almost colliding with Dominic, who had yet to run away. He was watching the exchange with terror written upon his face, as everything Zoey had been trying to tell him appeared to be true.

“You’re becoming a pain. Everyone, back to the cars. I’ll finish up here. The only one here who poses any bit of a threat to me is one of the weakest plant dragons we’ve ever had. Luckily, different DNA was used on me.” She ordered her crew, looking directly at Doug.

He snorted at her in derision, but remained silent, watching her.

“You don’t use your powers for anything other than mild attacks and defense. You can’t even manage thorns on your vines, after all these years?” She taunted, and he turned his eyes down.

“I don’t want to hurt people.” He told her flatly.

Ms.Kistle just laughed in return, but his downturned expression was the lapse in concentration she was waiting for. She knew she would be so much better at this than Karver. He was still a child in too many ways, despite being under his fathers’ favor so much. She snapped another vine forward, this time aiming for Zoey, but Doug’s clawed hand cleaved through it with barely enough time to spare.

He looked relieved as he made contact with the vines, until he heard the bloodcurdling scream behind him, and turned, paling instantaneously. Dominic had his hands out too, but they were frozen, as if he had been too late to do anything.

Zoey reached for her face, trying not to move, a twisted tree having grown partially out of the ground and speared her through one cheek and out the other. Blood was beginning to pool in her mouth and she found herself to be crying, half because of pain and half from panic.

Doug spun around again, taking hold of the branch with one hand and slicing through it with his claws on the other hand, trying not to let the sharp branch move too much. Still, Zoey whimpered, letting out a few more cries, and his vision began to tunnel again. He didn’t feel the slash of Kistle’s vines across his back, instead finding everything take on a green haze. The branch he was still holding onto began to feel soft in his hand, drying out and crumbling.

Zoey spat out a few wads of wood pulp and blood, it having nearly disintegrated in her mouth. She had never seen Doug do that before, as even his normal regression of plants was much more peaceful, and was always with plants he himself had created and could control. This was more of a rotting situation. She blinked through her teary eyes, in time to see him reach for her, but his eyes had taken on a faint, strange green glow.

He touched the sides of her face, just around the open wounds, and slowly, they healed over. He relaxed slightly upon seeing this, but then charged towards Kistle, knowing there was no way to get out of this without fighting.

“Dominic, go get help!” Doug yelled out a plea, not having the time to check and see if he had actually listened to him. He was too busy blocking Kistle’s vines with ones of his own, although luckily she seemed thrown off guard by his previous actions.

“What did you just do? How did you do that? Tell me what you just did!” Ms.Kistle demanded, her actions becoming frantic. Doug matched her attacks persistently, not knowing exactly what he did just then.

Dominic started to run off, dragging Zoey along, until a long vine snatched her out of his hand, and slammed her up against a tree, knocking her out cold.

“Zoey’s knocked out, I can’t just leave her here!” Dominic called to Doug, who didn’t respond, but didn’t rebuke him as he took a defensive stance with his knife, still standing a few feet back. Dominic inched forward as more of Kistle’s vines seemed to be slipping through and hitting Doug. He broke out into a full run when Kistle grabbed Doug around the throat with her vines, thorns tearing into his skin.