Hey all! I was looking through my profile the other day when I noticed my long forgotten story, so I decided to read it! Geez, why didn't anyone tell me I was that bad? I'm feeling kinda ashamed of my crappy writing skills now, do I'm gonna re-write "When The Moon Rises". Yep, that's right, from the very start. You'll find that some of the details have been changed to make it more real, and that there are some minor plot changes so things work out smoother. Well, enjoy!

(remember italics = Jake's thoughts and this story is set after the last episode)

In a large auditorium, a crumpled piece of paper bounced of the back of a head, then fell to the floor. A wrinkled teacher whirled around, trying to catch whoever had interrupted her enjoyment of the lecture. But the students behind her were listening with rapt attention to the lecture on other people's feelings and how to respect them. Convinced she had just nodded off for a bit and imagined the bump, the teacher turned back to the lecture.

Immediately cell phones were pulled back out, magazines retrieved from where they had been stuffed, and electronic games began their quiet beeping sounds again.

"Dude!" Someone hissed. "That was too close!"

"Yeah, don't blow it for the rest of us!" Another voice murmured angrily.

"Come on! That was the best one yet, perfect bulls-eye!" A teen in a red jacket said. "Just one more!

"Jake, come on!" The girl next to him had all but snapped. For six hours now she had been forced to sit next to a noisy boy who kept getting everyone in trouble. Worst of all, he got her pager confiscated! Not only was she sick of this lecture, she was sick of him!

Giving up, Jake sat back in the poorly cushioned seats. Everyone in his grade was going through a hellish rite of passage, for a week a speaker would come in for the entire school day and speak the annual lecture about morals and respect and blah, blah, blah…

It was driving him crazy!

There was only so mucha person could text and read magazines or comic books behind a teachers back without getting said objects taken away or the general experience of being a delinquent wore off. And they were only two days into the speech! The worst part was Jake's two best friends, Trixie and Spud, were seated no where near him. On the first day of the lecture, they could sit wherever they wanted, but there was too much talking, so everyone got split up. Then cell phones were taken away. Jake lost his the first day the lecture started. So much for texting everyone.

Resigning himself to hours more of monotone taking, Jake sat back and closed his eyes.

When Jake finally got out of school, he did what he normally did. Hung out with Trixie and Spud, skated home, ate, skated to his grandpa's shop, did his dragon training and/or dragon duties, skateed home, ate, wentto bed, woke up, went to school.

This pattern was never-ending, except on weekends and school breaks. Thank goodness after the week of lectures was over, spring vacation started and Jake had two and a half weeks of fun time with Trixie and Spud to look forward to.

Of course, he also had increased dragon duties to look forward to.

It wasn't that Jake didn't like his dragon duties, no, actually, he liked them. They were good for all sorts of things, like an excuse as to why he couldn't go to his younger sister's dance recital (Things were so much easier now that his dad knew he was the American Dragon), they sometimes were amazing adventures, and it was just nice to run around as a dragon for a bit.

Bad things came out of his dragon duties too. Every night he came home tired and dirty, sometimes injured, he had to cut time out of talking to Rose on the phone, and hanging out with his friends became hard because he couldn't schedule anything after seven at night! He even had to skip a once-in-a-lifetime music concert because a bunch of rouge giant leeches had invaded the forest the pixies lived in, and he was the one who had to deal with the leeches and angry pixies, and clean up the mess. You'd think him being the American Dragon would grant him a little more respect, but apparently not.

So after he was done talking to Spud and Trixie, he went home like he always did.

Jake greeted his dad at the door, yelled at Haley for eating the last of the cereal, and begged with his mother to try and get his phone back (he had his phone taken away at home too because his mother had to go get it from the detention room after he had it confiscated), and sat down on the couch.

It seemed as soon as he sat down and finished his granola bar, it was time to go to dragon training.

"The Fairy Delivery Service is running behind, and I offered for you to pick up the slack. Here is a rather important message that needs to be delivered to Miss Frau concerning the income of her store in the leprechaun village." Jake's grandpa, Lao Shi, said.

"Alright gramps, give me a minute." Jake grumbled as he stretched his muscles, preparing for the change that made him and most of his family famous in the magical community.

"Make sure it's delivered on time."

"When does it have to be delivered by?"

Lao Shi looked up at the clock.

"Five minutes."

Swearing under his breath, Jake grabbed the scroll from his grandfather's hands, dashed out the back door and jumped into the air. In a split second, scrawny legs and arms became muscular and scaly, fingers became claws, and teeth became harder and sharper than a railroad spike.

Miss Frau did not like to be kept waiting.

"Late! Late! You dragon, you say you fast, yes? Then why you here late?!" Miss Frau was boiling mad that Jake had been late ten minutes, especially when the message concerned her precious leprechaun-run store. The old and grouchy elf that preferred to live alone atop an even older church in in the lest crowded part of the city was never very nice to Jake when he came around. He supposed it was because he couldn't understand her accent the first time he met her, and had to ask for directions over and over.

"I'm sorry Miss Frau, there was some troub-"

"Trouble!? Trouble?! I give you trouble! Out! Out!" And with that, Miss Frau slammed her elf-sized steel-toed boots onto Jake's tail and walked into the bell tower that was her home.

Jake yelped and flew quickly to a darker roof. He stuck his head out form the shadow of a chimney and looked around. It seemed like no one saw or heard them, which was surprising, considering how much noise Miss Frau was making. Sitting back to nurse his bruised tail, Jake sighed. He really didn't mean to make her mad, but it was very hard to cross the entire city and not be seen by everyone! Seriously, if he could just fly out in the open, he could have been there with time to spare. But no, to protect the secret of the existence of the magical community, he had to fly in the shadows of buildings and sometimes even hop from rooftop to rooftop to avoid being seen.

Giving up hope for his aching tail, Jake rolled over and stretched out. He really should be getting back to the shop. There probably was tons more mail that needed to be delivered, and here he was lazing around. But he had been working so hard, for very long, in fact, his last break from school and dragon duties was about two months ago, when Lao Shi had gotten antsy and decided to do the work for the night. Jake had spent the night talking over the phone to Rose, his girlfriend that had moved to Hong Kong.

Dad was pretty ticked over the long-distance phone bill. But still, it was nice to hear her voice again.

Jake's eyelids dropped dangerously low as he imagined himself and Rose together again. Maybe they could go sit on a bench in the park, yes, that would be nice. Or they could go out to eat…

He heard a crunch of gravel. Jake's eyes flew open.

What? Where am I?

Jake was completely surrounded by darkness. And it was deathly silent. Jumping up, Jake listened warily.

"Miss Frau? Is that you?" Jake called out to the dark.

O-okay, I'm completely freaked out right now… You can come out!" Still no answer.

This is weird.

Shaking out his wings and preparing for a surprise, Jake braced himself.

"Hello? Anyone? Is there any- agghh!"

Jake thrashed about on the roof a bit before pausing and righting himself.

Oh, just a dream.

He looked around again to make sure no one had seen his embarrassing display, especially Miss Frau, who would never let him hear the end of it.

"How long did I sleep?" Jake looked at the sky. He could barley see the stars over the lighted city, but still stars meant night. And the streetlights were on.

"Damn." They turned the streetlights on at eight-thirty in the spring.

Gramps is gonna kill me. Either that or he's worried sick about where am.

Jake though for a second.

Nope, he's going to kill me.

Taking his time and slowly flying from shadow to shadow, Jake idly wondered what he was going to do tomorrow.

Probably the same thing as today.

Jake heaved another heavy sigh. Sometimes life got a little boring. Oh well, he had no right to complain.

As his tail brushed lightly against a tree, Jake noticed he was over the park. He had always loved this park. It seemed so big, no matter how you looked at it.

Wait, what was that?

Jake landed on a branch of a tree and listened.

There, right there.

He heard roaring! Roaring meant a fight! Fights mean excitement!

Jake launched himself so fast towards the noise he broke the branch right off the tree.

In the morning park monitors wondered why a perfectly healthy limb of a perfectly healthy tree lay shattered on the ground.

"How did this happen?" Wondered one monitor, clearly amazed.

"Darn kids." Grumbled the other monitor.

Another monitor just shook his head.

"How in the world did kids yank down an oak branch thirty feet off the ground?"

"Remember the time the gang of hooligans down the corner spray-painted the entire monument boulder lime green? This is nothing compared to that."

The others considered this.

"Oh. Well, okay, let's hurry up and pick this thing up, I'm hungry."

"There's a new restaurant near Paulie's. We could go there."

"After we file a police report on these troublemakers."

"Exactly"

You like? Please tell me if you saw any grammar or spelling errors so I can fix them. I know it's short, but bear with me.

Please feel free to discuss the chapter with me, how you felt, what you like, what you didn't like, etc. I am open to everything. Questions, comments, concerns, anything of the sort. Flames, however, will be used to warm my stony heart.

Reviews are appreciated!

Lots of Love- ASAS