A/N: I apologize for this being extremely late. I'm going to have to move update days from Wednesdays to Saturdays. School has gotten more rigorous, and I need to dedicate my time during the week to work on school.

Also, there will be some mild cursing in this chapter, and most likely in chapters to come. But it shouldn' exceed this level.

I'm sorry again for the delay; here is chapter one.

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chapter 1.

Dragon

I bit back a hiss to prevent them from letting them feel the satisfaction of causing harm over me.

Another long day. And today, the heartless scientists got bodyguards. They must have gotten more funding. I inwardly shuddered at the thought.

When ‘Project MONSTER’ was first announced to the small amount of public allowed, it didn’t receive much interest, as they dismissed the Project as some foolish science project, and I was thankful for it. In the old days, experimentation meant seeing what made me tick, and I’d even almost have a little fun just randomly combusting and screwing with their data. It wasn’t typical joy, but to see them squirm, confused and hopeless, was better than to watch them sit there, recording data, and prodding more things at me.

I looked down, almost reminiscently, at the code name I had received the first day.

Almost.

I don’t know what my name is. Or at least, I don’t remember. They said I didn’t have a name, so they gave me one. I soon found out that was a lie.

I tore through files and documents, trying to get a lead on anything that was about me.

But that was also the day in which I learned that I lived in a much bigger world than I thought I did.

I saw hundreds of ‘names,’ some in different colors than others. I looked down at my bar code to make sure I still remembered it before frantically searching for it on the monitor. I know they catalog all the bull they write about me, but where IS it?!

My heart started to pump blood faster and faster and my body temperature started to gradually rise.

Footsteps echoed in the cold hallways, accompanied by concerned voices, some yelling.

I scrolled faster. Where was my name?!

Suddenly I was jolted out of the world in the monitor and into reality. Two pairs of rock like hands grabbed my shoulders and started to haul me out. I screamed, kicked, and flailed like a toddler, my body temperature rising more quickly with the need to flee. Just to run out of the corner I was stuck in.

They dropped me and wailed as they tried to cool their hands. But by then I’m met with a tranquilizer and I fade off into black…

I ended up in a freezer when my conscious came back. Not quite so literally, but my cell might as well have been one.

And that’s the way it’s been until now. A freezing, dark, metal hole in the wall.

I then heard the two bodyguards who had entered the chamber a few minutes ago speak up. One came to my door and unlocked it. The other grabbed a hold of me and roughly shoved me out of the cell. Should I even bother asking?

“We’ve decided to finally boot your little punk out of here,” one of the thugs commented, his voice slathered with giddy contempt.

“Yeah, we’re taking you to the big HQ now,” the other piped in, his grin noticeable in his voice, giving me a shove as well.

And by “we,” they meant the higher-ups. The day those two start making decisions for anybody other than themselves is the day all my freedom will cost me is to just transform and get the hell out.

Apparently I was kept on the DL from HQ until recently. I was the first of my kind ever to be found. Hurray…

So I guess this branch and the HQ aren’t well in terms of relationships, if some…thing like me was kept hidden for that long.

But HQ’s got eyes and ears everywhere, so they found out, of course. And now they’re taking me. I guess I should be a bit touched at the attention in normal terms, because they’re arguing over me. But this situation isn’t all that normal.

We finally reach the main entrance of the HQ building. Scratches and bruises are all over my body after walking in the frigid weather here. Even though the HQ building and “my” smaller branch were very close together, they sadly lacked the intelligence to think of a nice, warm tunnel that connects the two. My human form doesn’t insulate as much heat as my true form, but I had little to no choice as to which form I would prefer to be.

The warmth gives me a shocking greeting when I enter the building, but then hugs my shivering body. Well, at least something cared about me, even if it wasn’t a living being.

The two dunderheads push me further in before I could fully thaw and nod to the other guards at the inner entrance to the antechamber.

We entered the metallic, octagonal antechamber and headed straight for a wide, seemingly endless tunnel at the far end of it.

I stumble as they keep shoving me to go.

Oh, sure, give this a tunnel, I thought sourly as I kept marching.

I wasn’t kidding when I said seemingly endless. It literally felt endless. My legs were already in pain earlier, but now, I don’t even know the state of them. At least I’m completely thawed though.

At last I see a dim light at the end and we pick up the pace slightly.

I’m all but kicked into a geometrical bubble in the hallway and my eyes catch a glance at the two operation rooms to my left. A bunch of labcoats are crowded around a table in one of the rooms, hunched over, while others are running around, frantic, like blind mice. I do a double take to find a dead body on the table.

He is bare because the labcoats are examining him, and he is also dead, but he is toned. I notice many scars and stitched markings on his body, mostly all fairly symmetrical, which I found odd. I notice the telltale signs of a Mohawk growing in between the panicking figures.

My eyes catch his face and I see he’s young, or at least his body does.

He looks about my age…

I see his head turn to me and we hold eye contact for a heartbeat.

“Hey, flame head, get moving!” orders the more dominant of the two thugs and pushes me, making me break the meeting gaze and fall over.

The quieter one yanks me back up and I’m shoved on forward.

I stumble into a walking pace until we arrive at another chamber.  We keep marching without a word until we get to a door on the right wall.

Punching in the passkey, the thug promptly push me to the entrance and shove me down it, sending me tumbling.

I land roughly at the painfully long trail of steps, not without a few cuts and bruises.

The room is huge. And stark white. Much bigger than what I’m comfortable with at the smaller branch. Warm flames at my wounds instinctively as I get up and walk around the huge space.

The first thing I notice is the high roof of the pit.

It could probably fit me even in my full form…I think, a little on the optimistic side.

Then I notice the glass boxes half way fused into the walls, floors above me. I observe the metal chairs, tables, computers, and cameras, all ready, and there to help document me. Lovely. Below the boxes, I also see a thick platform of concrete and metal with railing, following the observation boxes along the wall, protruding from the wall, serving to be a balcony. 

Well if I can stretch myself out, then maybe I’ll have some fun. I smirk at the inward comment. The room even had a faint spotlight in the middle. Perfect.

A lot of old wires and electrical devices dangle under the hanging observatory boxes. Skeptical, I walk over to one of them. On closer inspection, the ends of the plastic encased wires are horribly frayed, as if an animal tore at them. They are littered everywhere. Most are dangling from the thickly layered balcony, but they are on the floor too, just under the balcony. None near the center.

I glance back up at the boxes again. No one, not a single breathing body, is present in any of the boxes looped around in the walls. I scrunch my brow, puzzled. Usually “doctors” are flooding around me, trying to observe me, even if they’ve already seen me already and gotten sufficient notes.

But I shrug. Means more peace to myself.

But I don’t let my guard down. I know the cameras in here are active. I can feel the warmth of the batteries that are powering them whirring and giving energy to the mechanical eye. They probably caught the flames earlier on tape. Oh well.

I walk around the small arena, scoping the place out more. There wasn’t much. It was just a white, metallic, barren wasteland. Just me, the floor, lights, and wires.

After walking around for a few minutes, I climb through a thick curtain of old, torn wires and go into a random nook and made myself comfortable. If no one is gonna come, then I might as well catch up on some needed sleep.

The last night I got eight hours of sleep…hmm… I try to think of one. Not a day came into mind.

Shrugging, I let the choked back fatigue overcome me as I welcome the black of sleep.

My mind is shoved brutally back into reality as I feel a sharp shock in my side, waking me up.

I jump up from my nook and want to turn around to see what awoke me, but I had forgotten my setting. I jump up to have my face be introduced to the wall of wires I had crawled through earlier. So I promptly untangle myself and whirr around, gripping onto the urban vines behind me for support.

I spot a black, spindly arm reaching out for me, trying to grab me with its three claws. In the middle of the connecting joint, I saw a small lens. A camera. They are watching me now.

Swiftly, I scurry out of the wires and gracefully stumble onto the brightly lit floor.

When did it become so bright? How come I didn’t sense it? It must have been really recent. My body heat tells me I was asleep for almost three hours.

I gaze up at the boxes and turn to see all of them. They’re filled with scientists. But I don’t feel the excited tension, the hushed anticipation. They are just…watching me.

I hear, feel more like, gears whirring as I heard more of the arms that had woken me come charging at me. I steal a glance at one particular box and saw a man seated at a desk with a dozen monitors and a lot of buttons.

Well, I’ll know who to thank later, I think bitterly before I jumped back just in time.

An arm grabs at the now empty space where I used to stand, but then redirects itself towards me.

After a quick inhale, I let loose a healthy stream of fire at four of the arms present.

But as the flames die down, I feel two cold claws gripping my arms, one on each. My focus drops to the two claws as I try to get them to release me. But I know that attempts to struggle free were futile. So, the next best thing.

My skin is already hardening and forming itself into the dark, individual scales, then carefully growing and overlapping themselves into the keeled armor I knew and loved. Two red horns start to grow out of my head and my eyes slowly start to glow a fiery red. The intensifying heat melts away my human façade, revealing the sharp pink on my eyelids and the contrasting dark shadows around my eyes, almost taunting with power.

Simultaneously, I started to grow in size. I snicker in satisfaction as I hear the metal claws first scratching from my coarse armor, then cracking, and then finally breaking due to the width of its victim of capture.

I feel my tail bone extend as I grew, gaining a tail well coated with keeled armor. Ridges start to grow from my spine.

Lastly, wings dichotomize from my back and start to transform the skin into a thin, hardened, leathery material. It is almost translucent, but not quite. A small ridge grows into a small horn in the middle, making the bend more prominent. Like fingers, five long, thin strips fade into the darkness of my scales and fully extended, tips past the edges of my wings.

Fully comfortable, I stretch my neck and exhaled a good blast of hot fire. It was a healthy yellow-orange.

No need to melt the metal here, that would really piss them off, I think, smirking.

I make eye contact with one of the observers. And I laugh. I couldn’t help it. I could see, smell, sense that he was a newbie. He is trying with all his might to keep it together, but now, I could see—and smell, man that’s ghastly—the sweat pouring off of him in buckets.

The gears turn in my head to come to a point in logic where none of them have probably never seen me up close and personal like this in real life. Only in pictures in those damned computers have they seen me, and even at the smaller facility, I have never given them a show like this.

A grumble leaks out of my throat. Well, if that is the case, then let’s give them a show.

A pained grunt with a jerk signals that I was “at home.” Swiftly ripping off the flame retardant bag over my head, I am greeted with the monotony and coldness of a cramped, metal jail cell. The bars behind me slam with a horrifyingly shrill ring and the three guards stomped off. Well, at least I gave them each some good burns before they had the “bright idea” to get gloves. Real thick ones. And fast.

A tad exhausted, because it wasn’t an everyday occurrence, transforming into a dragon, I drop down into a lax sitting position, when I notice a presence beside me.

“Hey,” he, by the sound of his voice, greets, not too tentatively and not too upfront, but forward enough to say that he wasn’t scared. I instinctively stiffen, surprised that someone else is here. Dwelling on it, there wasn’t a note of terror in his voice, it was really…conversational.

Well, this day has got to be the craziest day of my life, I conclude in my head.

“Hey,” I return, voice considerably more stern than how I had wanted it to sound. It had sounded guarded and untrusting. His rang with, dare I say it, a bit of brightness. But what can I do, the only time I’ve met someone this comfortably my age was when I was towering over them, toying with them before they became my dinner.

I glance over to the source of the voice. It was supposed to be a momentary glance, but my eyes are all but popping out of their sockets when I see his face.

“Y-You’re dead!”