A/N: I know I all but died, but for a senior in high school, life gets tough. But I have been working diligently on this fanfic and will hopefully be updating more frequently now that winter break is coming.

A great big thank you to everyone who has been reading this. An extra cookie if you have commented.

- - -

chapter 2.

Dragon

“Excuse me?” my companion questions, a slight confused smile on his face.

“You’re supposed to be dead! I saw you on the—”

But I stop to hear him chuckle.

How does anyone keep their sanity long enough in this place to even spit out a laugh?

“Technically, yeah, I am dead,” he responds, shadow of a smile in his eyes.

“Then…what are you?” I haven’t encountered anything in my lifetime that could come back from the dead.

He shrugs and simply says, “The mummified remains of a boy, really.”

His casualty at the whole thing still kind of blows me away.

Manners escaping me, I remain gaping at him for more than a moment. The boy starts to fidget after the first moment.

After the shock registers, I compose myself. But I try to rethink this.

I’ve never met anyone that wasn’t…normal. Normal being humans, and even with that limitation, I’ve seen some pretty weird humans. But a mummy? I start to take back all those times I scoffed at human legends of mummified people that came back alive to eat them thousands of years later.

This is real…

“So…what’s your name?” The boy asks.

My second blank of the day comes. I have no idea what my name was. I wasn’t called anything, except…

I stutter a bit, trying to regain my memory of it. “Uhh, 9Ae-73—” but I stopped from continuing.

“No, no, not that. Your real name,” the mystery mummy corrects, cutting me off.

I become quiet, stumbling upon his words. Real name? What does he mean by my “real name”?

Do I even have a real name? I am only addressed by the serial number they assigned me, and noth--...

“Dragon.” A candid name for a not-so-candid being. How ironic.

But my companion doesn’t dwell on it too much. He’s either obviously new or he’s been here in this hellhole longer than I have.

“Cool. Nice to meet you; I’m Sol,” he introduces, giving another small smile.

I nod in return, still trying to get over the initial shock of any buoyant emotions in a depraved hole.

A moment flies by as we size each other up. He was about to continue speaking when we hear rustling footsteps go by. Instantaneously, we both freeze, muscles tensing and gazes penetrating. I’ve only been here for a good few hours, but I am already catching onto the vibe of this place.

The footsteps aren’t fading away. On the contrary, they are growing in a crescendo, heading straight towards us. But these aren’t the click-clack of official heels, the stomping of bluntly aggressive guards, nor the dragging sound of another fellow prisoner being dragged away. They are just shuffling feet.

A grubby, old looking man with a much needed shave comes by with two trays, in which miscellaneous substances were slathered onto. I hoped to whatever spirits that were present that we weren’t expected to ea--

The old man simply unlocks a section at the bottom of our cages where a rectangular slot was inscribed, opens the slots, shoves the trays at our feet, re-locks the slots, and shuffles away.

I look down to observe the sludge at my feet.

It is sludge. I am not going to deny that. Back at the old lab, I was on a much more substantial diet that actually appeared to have some variety in it (but I later realized there was very little, but it was variation nonetheless). But all I see here is mush. So I conclude that either HQ is going under some major financial issues, or there are a lot more of us than I had originally suspected.

“Hey, Sol.”

“Hmm?”

“What’s in...” My inquiry dwindles as I watch him casually dip his fingers into the unappealing mush and start to eat it.

“This.” I finish, barely audible.

“It’s what they feed us,” he answers, just as casually as he continues to eat some more.

I pause, slowly starting to sit down. “And...you’re ok with this?”

The smiling boy shrugged as he thoughtfully his fingers. “It’ll keep us alive, which is their intent. Honestly, I’ve been eating so much of this that I’m immune to all of the other unappetizing factors.”

I stared down at the mush at my feet again. This was supposed to keep me alive? I’m a dragon, I needed meat!

“How the hell is this crap supposed to keep me alive?” I asked, obviously disgusted.

“It’s a weird formula they have. Your’s might be different than mine, because I don’t require a carnivorous diet,” he informed nonchalantly as he ate some more.

Still thoroughly disgusted, but hungry nonetheless after my snowy trek, I cautiously dug my fingers into the grime and scooped a small bit in between my fingers, some overflowing.

The action of dipping my fingers into the crude mess was repulsive as it was, but actually putting it in my mouth, chewing it, and swallowing it was much, much worse. I was surprised I didn’t gag it back out.

To confirm my suspicions of my face reflecting my horrendous feeling, I heard muffled laughter from Sol.

“What’s so funny, huh?” I challenged, half growling as I swallowed the rest down.

“Your face,” he promptly answered and continued to fail to muffle his incessant giggling.

I paused again, never really having confronted this kind of banter before. Well, we’ll see who’s laughing in the end.

Sol’s laughing was just dying down when his face was hit with a fistful of my “dinner.” His laughter stopped as he sat in his spot for a moment, face dripping in sludge.

Not being able to hold it in, I let out a healthy laugh that I didn’t even knew I possessed. It felt good.

“Hey, what’s so funny?” he asked with an edge of rage.

“Your face!” I spit out through the laughing.

It felt really good to laugh like this. It wasn’t filtered by a sick rage to kill and devour anything I saw within my range of vision, it was just to--

This time I really thought I had upchucked my dinner, because the laughter was hurting my stomach. But when I rubbed whatever was in my eye, I saw Sol’s triumphant face and his face almost cleared of the gook-ball.

“Right back at you,” he said without any prompting. He put on another smile, but it wasn’t challenging nor overbearing, it was just his small-eyed smile.

Donning a smirk myself, I grabbed another fistful of my dinner and chucked it at him. For a mummified body, his reflexes were still in pristine shape. He managed to dodge my shot and get to his arsenal to form his ammo. Not wasting any time, I followed suit, and our virtually empty hall was filled with much laughter and flying globs of crude animal fat, protein, and carbs.

As soon as our ammunition was depleted (including the plate, which I chucked at his head. The boy has a hard head.), we sagged down against the wall into a sitting position, exhausted from our food fight.

Per my instincts, I rid the clumps of food from my fiery red hair by giving my head a good shaking. I let out a frustrated groan when the clumps refused to free themselves from my body.

“This stuff is disgusting; you could use this for adhesive,” I complained.

“No kidding. I’m surprised my stomach hasn’t shut itself after eating this stuff so much,” Sol replied.

Letting an aggravated growl slip, I lit my body on fire to burn the clumps off. I breathed in the glorious flames as they engulfed me.

I shook my body one last time to get rid of most of the ashes.

I heard a whispered awe coming from Sol, so I turned to face him.

“So you are a dragon,” he commented after a full moment went by.

“Yep, a one and only dragon,” I returned with some self confidence and a boosted esteem.

Sol chuckled and stood up. He walked over to the barred wall we shared. “Well, one and only dragon, welcome to the roughest hood out there.”

I smirked and rose from my lax position against the wall and faced him.

And we touched fists.