HEY, so how about resurrecting a fanfic that hasn't been updated for six and a half long, long years? Like, dude, American Dragon was still only a year removed from being canceled back then, and now here we are in the midst of its 10th anniversary. Yeesh.

I've been trying to write the following chapter basically since then. Just got way, way out of the fanfic writing game, which is sad because it's something that I fully admit I could never, ever do as a career but still very much like doing - sorta as a creative release, I guess. Hoping finally finishing this chapter will be the catalyst for more. Think I started actually writing this chapter in its current form a year ago but obviously hoping it doesn't take nearly that long for chapter 12.

Anyway, hello to the probably two people out there who still frequent the ADJL section! Unless there are more of you. I hope there are more of you. I'm YFWE and I've been writing for this fandom for a decade now. Life is cruel and time is a flat circle.

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Ch. 11: An Unlikely Partnership

YFWE

Rose's greatest triumph as a dragon thus far had come, she felt, in the last hour or so. Not only had she made quick work of the Huntsclan practically as soon as she had met them in midair, flying at them as a yellow blur unable to be stopped by mere warm bodies planted firmly to the ground, regardless of what potent weapons they might be wielding - she had also made it back to the city in what seemed like record time, though since she had never flown from the base in upstate New York to New York City as a dragon, she admittedly had a limited frame of reference.

Still, that did not mitigate her pride as she burst through the front door of Canal Street Electronics, her chest heaving from exhaustion but with the slightest of grins upon her face. She was back. She had escaped. She was home.

Home?

That she had considered the word troubled her at first - Lao Shi, Fu Dog, home? - but she had little time to mull it over, since she had just busted into someone's home and/or place of business (in this case, both) , and most would not take kindly to that sort of thing.

And sure enough - WOOF! came the loud sound that occasionally emanated from Fu Dog, a rare but potent sign that he was in fact a dog... one that was hundreds of years old, sure, but a dog all the same. The noise rang out from the next room, however muffled, distant and a little hesitant - Fu was not much of an attack dog, after all.

The shar-pei appeared from around the corner, growling, at which point Rose had already dusted herself off and shut the front door, turning to face him. "No, Fu, it's me! It's me!" Rose exclaimed, waving her claws wildly, having not yet realized that, yes, perhaps it was time to shift out of her dragon form, as such a form can tend to be much more formidable-looking than, say, a teenage girl.

Fu's eyes widened and he clutched his chest, narrowing his gaze. "Ah! Kid!" he shouted. "Almost gave me a heart attack, huh?!"

"Sorry, sorry!" she cried. "I, uh... yeah, let's get out of this dragon form."

By the time she did so, Lao Shi was there, less flustered than Fu but nonetheless noticeably breathing a heavy sigh of relief. "Rose," he gulped, rushing to her side. "You are... you..."

He sighed, reaching a hand to her shoulder. "I am glad you are all right."

Rose smiled a weary smile. "Same, you have no idea."

"Come," Grandpa said. "Into the living room. Fu Dog, make tea. I will call Sun, tell her to call off the search. Then perhaps... we can talk."

The next half hour was a blur. Rose found herself a place on the living room couch, greeted with a cup of tea a few minutes later - lukewarm, but in hundreds of years, Fu had never quite mastered the art of tea brewing. She felt her muscles relax as she lay on the couch, every ounce of adrenaline that had activated within after her escape from the Huntsclan prison slowly oozing away. Sun was there later, and she had others with her, people Rose had not met - some seemingly guards of some sort, donning sleek, skintight jumpsuits and carrying weapons of which she did not know the importance. The others were dressed in robes and other regal garb, one a man and the other a woman. Both spoke animatedly to Sun and stole a few glances into the room where Rose lay, deliriously tired and unabashedly unaware of all dealings within the home, while one of the guards, eventually, stood watch.

When she finally came to after a brief rest, she was no longer alone with just the guard. Lao Shi was there, Sun and the two unknowns with him. She awoke in time to see Fu arriving with a fresh cup of tea; the other had since grown cold.

"Hello, Rose," Sun breathed. Her expression was one of warmth, yet motherly concern. "How are you? And please, spare no detail; we must know."

Rose felt fine enough. After all, she was not hurt at the Huntsclan prison - at least that she recalled. She had been exhausted from the flight, perhaps fatigued given she did not know how long she had been gone and locked away, but above all, neither her body nor her mind felt seemed deeply affected, save for the part about Jake.

Her eyes snapped wide open. Oh, yes, that.

"There's something you need to know," Rose blurted, and Sun, who had leaned in near Rose, was momentarily taken aback.

"Yes? What is it, dear? What did they do to you?"

"Oh, not me," Rose said, rising a bit from the couch, propping herself up with her elbows. "I'm fine. No, really, I am. But it's Jake, Sun, Lao. It's Jake. They have a plan."

"Well, of course," one of the new entrants, a blue-haired woman, spoke. "The Huntsclan always has a plan - mind you, it's usually the same. I can't imagine Mr. Long, as the new Huntsmaster's apprentice, would not be privy to their plan to rid the world of -"

"Ma'am, you're forgetting I was part of it, too," Rose countered, snapping perhaps a bit too much - but she did not know the woman, though there was a twinge of familiarity, so what did she care? "No, it's a plan that involves Jake, but I don't think he's in on it."

"...go on," said the blue-haired woman, noticeably irked but attentive.

"They know about the antidote. And once they get it, they're going to kill Jake."

Lao Shi furrowed his brow, shooting a furtive glance at Sun before gazing sternly at his new dragon pupil. "And what about you?"

"I don't know," Rose replied, shaking her head. "Probably return me to my rightful state as the Huntsmaster's apprentice. They said with Jake gone, I would have no need to disobey him."

"Kill the dragon," Fu said, "kill the source of weakness."

"Sure, but I wouldn't want to go back to the Huntsclan," she countered. "I understand everything now. I don't want to hunt magical creatures, especially dragons. And I can't hurt Jake. I just can't."

"It may not matter - we know what happened when you two switched, after all!"

Lao Shi's words cut through Rose, though she doubted he intended it. It was something that had troubled her ever since her new life began - why did Jake undergo such a sea change, one that saw him go from the carefree, fun-loving, goofy kid she had known and enjoyed the company of to the mean-spirited, perhaps downright evil boy that saw no issue with turning on his kind and skinning them to please the Huntsmaster? Rose had once been that way, but not at the time of the change. It was as though Jake had taken over the persona the Huntsmaster had always craved in an apprentice, the manifestation of the hellbent-on-domination Huntsboy that Rose could have been but never was.

Eventually, after a few moments of silence, Lao Shi spoke up: "Ah, Rose, I am sorry - our guests, you do not know them, do you?"

Rose shook her head. There was a familiarity there, but she could not quite pinpoint it.

"These are councilors Andam and Omina of the Dragon Council. Sun had enlisted the Council's help once you went missing. They organized and oversaw the search."

That was where Rose recognized them - however brief, the Huntsclan and members of the Council had met in combat previously. She nodded to each of them. "Thank you. It's an honor that you came for me."

"The American Dragon was in danger," Andam responded. "No matter your past transgressions, it would not be right of us to abandon one of our own."

Own. The word echoed in Rose's mind. ...Home.

"So," Omina said, "do you know anything more of the plan?"

"I wish I did. All I overheard was that they wanted to switch us back, kill Jake, set me in line."

"And then what?"

"Then... well, then I escaped."

"How?"

"The doors were just open." And as soon as she said it, a wave of realization came over Rose; it was something she had not thought of before then, a choice detail that slipped her mind in the rush to escape. The doors had just been... open. She had walked out free.

"So what you're saying is that right after you overheard the Huntsclan discussing what we assume to be their master plan, you found that the cell that was holding you was actually unlocked the entire time? And you were able to waltz out undetected?"

"There were guards," Rose recalled. "Once I was out, they seemed to discover me pretty quickly. I was shot at, they had weapons, but I took them down before escaping."

"Which is interesting," said Andam. "Because from what I understand, your dragon powers are far from fully realized, though modest in their strength."

"Like the Huntsclan wanted you to escape," Lao Shi said.

And that had been the conclusion to which Rose had not wanted to arrive, but the likelihood was more and more reasonable with every breath. Most importantly: the unlocked door. In no way did that add up; the Huntsclan had always been very thorough with its prisoners and their captivity. No way the Huntsmaster would overlook such a crucial detail.

"I wonder, then," Sun said. She was on the edge of the room, near the window, gazing out of it in a deep thought that had been broken with her speech. "Is the plan imparted to Rose, and then to us, truly real?"

"The million dollar question," added Fu.

"So wait, you don't think Jake is in danger at all?" Rose demanded, her fingers tensing as they clasped the edge of the couch arms. All this time, her chief worry had been Jake and his safety, despite the Huntsboy's obvious intentions to do her harm. But if all along her worry had been misplaced...

"He could be," Lao Shi said, "and he could not. There really is no way of knowing without confronting them ourselves."

xXxXxXx

From where he sat, the Huntmaster could hear the slightest rustling of trees, shaking however rigidly in the fall breeze. Often they mistook this sound for an approaching intruder, given the similarities - and now was no different, his best guards on high alert outside the rural upstate base on the occasion that the dragons, especially Lao Shi and his new pet, arrived in the vicinity.

And he expected it. His plan, which began with casually informing Rose of his very false plan to fre her from her duties as the American Dragon - killing Jake in the process - followed his trickery with a visit to the Huntsclan base rather than the cave where the Crystal of Tilton's antidote resided. The imminent battle between the two groups would not take place in neutral ground; rather, he would have home field advantage. Only Rose would know the place - of course, this was why it was crucial to kidnap her but set her free, so she could lead the dragons back - but she was still a child. A mere child. No threat, certainly, to the Huntsmaster.

But he had not expected them to arrive so soon.

The Huntsmaster enjoyed his study at this particular base since it was of course concealed but so close to the surface that any living thing stepping on the ground above him could be heard with minimal effort. Normally there was nothing to worry about, a forest-dwelling animal the culprit. But he was trained by now to distinguish between the two, and what he heard was unmistakably human.

But just one. Interesting.

Nevertheless, it was his immediate order that the perpetrator be met outside, as was customary. A team of guards would intercept the visitor and out would come the Huntsmaster, engulfed in his longest flowing purple robe, his helmet adorning his head as though he was a skeleton-like dragon himself, to meet whomever had traveled to the base. A mere accident that someone had stumbled upon their hiding spot? No matter; a simple mind-erasing potion would do the trick.

Today that was not the case. Instead, greeting the Huntsmaster as he strode into sheltered sunlight was a smirk he recognized, though he had only met it once before. It was confident, yet unhinged; welcoming and upsetting.

"You," he growled. "From the satyr safehouse."

"I hardly think you should forget my name already. Marnie Stewart is the name. And you're the Huntsmaster."

"That's true, I am," the Huntsmaster said curtly. "And this is my territory. What, pray tell, is your business within its bounds?"

"Well," Stewart gingerly attempted to shoulder herself away from the Huntsclan guards who had intercepted her, taking a step toward the Huntsman before a sharp, glinting blade found itself in front of her, daring her to pass. She paused. "...I think you and I may desire the same thing. And against the same party."

"And what's that?"

"Revenge," she seethed, smirking again.

The Huntsmaster did not speak at first, his narrow eyes squinted even further at the revelation before him: the small blond-haired woman, her arms folded, a rolling pin tucked into some kind of holster at her side as though it were a gun. Soon enough, he emitted a brief chuckle. Then another, and another. Soon the patch of forest was filled with the deep, reverberating laughter of the Huntsmaster, booming throughout the small clearing while nearby a flock of bluebirds dashed away.

Stewart's right eye twitched. She had not expected the warmest of interceptions, certainly, but she, Marnie Stewart, made a mockery? It was nearly more than she could handle.

"Listen, y-" she began with a growl, but softened once she saw the Huntsmaster's eye turn toward her, his gaze narrowed menacingly. "I-I mean, I'm sorry, what exactly is so funny?"

The Huntsmaster's voiced dripped with sarcasm as he shrugged. "Certainly. Partners. You make a lot of sense, my dear."

"And why not? Trust me, Huntsmaster, I love to laugh - but I fail to see what was so funny in this instance."

He stepped forward, sauntering slowly toward Stewart, his eyes not leaving hers. Marnie stood firm, resilient in her offer.

"Because," the Huntsmaster spoke finally, having circled his former opponent like a tiger ready to pounce, "I don't trust you. Just a short time ago, you tried to harm not only our common enemy, but also my soldiers and I. Your motives do not seem aligned with ours."

"Probably an honest assessment."

"So you'll forgive me if I avoid fighting the urge to kill you here, as though you were an irritating, meaningless gnat."

For once Stewart was speechless, her blonde hair matted against her forehead from a combination of stress and having massaged the tender area with her hands, wincing uncomfortably.

But if there was one thing on which she prided herself, it was her quick wit. Her hands lowered to her waist, then clasped together, and she rubbed them as though she were washing them - cleansing herself of the sudden dreariness that had washed over her when her initial plan had not gone the way she hoped. No, it will not end here, she thought. Draw him in, draw him in...

"It's true, we may have been enemies once, my friend," she said curtly. "But you must know about my own allies."

"Your allies?"

"Yes, indeed, my allies. And they would be your allies, too."

The Huntsmaster said nothing - not a "go on," not a "get out." Nothing.

And that was all the opening Marnie Stewart needed.

From the apron that was still wound tightly around her waist, she pulled a wad of brown-ish dough. Then another. And another. She gingerly placed the dough in a line before her on the grass, spaced apart evenly, and produced a tiny vial, much like those she had used to knead and shape the dough to begin with in her home.

She shot one last glance at the Huntmaster, who watched intently, yet diffidently. "Watch this," she breathed with a smirk, and poured out part of the small bottle's contents onto the dough - one drop at a time.

It took a moment, but soon the dough began to emit a slight, yellow glow. And then it began to rise and expand, both upward and outward. Limb-like appendages appeared where they had not been before and the dough's surface teemed, as though alive.

The Huntsmaster could only grin.

END