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Cienna's POV

"Stop it, Jake!" Gramps ordered, "This is not who you are!". Jake laughed as a tray of syringes went flying towards the elderly dragon, regaining my strength, I jumped on Jake's back in a feeble attempt to distract him for Gramps. He cried out as I put him in a chokehold and swung my bodyweight to the left. He went down but did a shoulder tuck so that he was landing on me, mainly my head, neck, and shoulders. I cried out as my head slammed on the hard tile floor and glass punctured my back. My plan worked though, Gramps came up and whiped his tail at Jake's still human form, enough to knock him off but not hurt him too badly.

He landed on the radiator under a lage window, I cringed as I realized how close he was to going through the glass, don't hurt him Gramps. Gramps wasted no time and tried to take control, he flew over and grabbed Jake by wrapping his tail around the teenager. Jake squirmed but was unsuccessful, he looked Gramps dead in the eyes and a ear spliting scream cut through the air. The same scream that we heard at the Island.

The large window shattered behind them and the shards shot across the room with intention, Gramps dropped Jake and flew over to Fu and I. He use his body to shield us against the blades. When he deemed it safe, Gramps got up and turned to where Jake should have been but he was nowhere in sight. He cautiously scanned the room but came up with nothing, did he jump out the window?

"Are you OK?" he asked turning to me, no I'm not OK! How can I be? I almost got killed by my partner and then he vanishes into thin air, how would I be OK? I nodded, my shoulder ignited with seering pain. When I pulled Jake to the left I was going to roll off on my right, but when he tucked I landed on my left shoulder. It hasn't completely healed yet, I think he purposely tucked with his left so my shoulder would take both of our weight and give out. Now that I thought about it, I wasn't OK, physicaly. Everywhere hurt and my head was throbbing, probably bleeding too, glass had punctured my skin where usually the scales would kick in and keep the glass from injuring me.

I was getting weaker. I wasn't made to fight Jake, we had to work together. Up until now Jake was technically protecting me, buffering the blows if you will, until I was strong enough but now that the one who was once protecting me is now my opponent I'm not sure if I'll be able to fight this one.

"I'm not OK, Gramps." I confessed, I was still sitting on the ground and could hear people running towards us in the halls,

"We should go." Gramps said, he picked me up with his tail (like he had Jake) and Fu jumped on his back. We flew out the window before anyone saw us.

We got back to the shop 20 minutes after we left. Sun Park was waiting in the front room with Haley when we walked in, I was going to ask why they were there but I figured they would tell me anyway so I decided to save my breath.

"Did you find him?" Sun asked as she stood up, she was a very graceful woman with jet black hair. Fu said that dragons were naturally graceful creatures and it showed in their human forms aswell, I think he was lying because I was far from graceful, Jake was pretty light on his feet which I would tease him about, I was the black sheep in the grace and beauty department... more like a three legged cow with a bad twitch. Gramps shook his head no and she fell onto the couch dejectedly. I sat on the couch next to her and she noticed the wounds on my back,

"Oh my gosh! What happened?" My back and shoulder was bleeding, I was covered in scrapes. She grabbed the first aid kit from behind the desk,

"I'm fine, really. I'll just go take a shower and they'll fall out no problem." I stood up, the last thing I want is to have someone pulling glass out of my back. She glanced at me and turn to Gramps who was still in his dragon form. tweezers in hand,

"I guess you're first Lao Shi." she smiled, I headed for the shower. I walked into the washroom and observed the damage in the mirror. Bruises started to form all over my body, finger shaped bruises formed around my neck. My shoulder was bleeding a bit and blood leaked down my back. I got into the shower and started to rinse the blood off, the cuts on my back stung but at least the glass shards fell out under the water, what the hell is going on here?... Then it hit me.

I walked out of the bathroom and stormed to Fu's desk and bookshelves. They were in the back room and were still tending to Gramps' wounds,

"I know what's going on! I know why this is happening!" I enthused, I ran over to a stack of books and rummaged through them until I found the one Fu used to explain our origins. I opened the gold and emerald coloured leather book and flipped through our recorded past, some blanks we had to filled in ourselves and recorded those in the book too. I flipped to a page that had a hologram or Jake and I many lives ago with a dark, cloaked figure. I stared at the photo until everything came back to me in a rush of memories.

The gates of hell had opened again, evil spirits flooded the Earth and corrupted both the magical and human realm. Lucifer's (the devil) right hand man, Orision had come out of the depths of Hell and plagued the Earth with what is now infamously known as The Black Plague.

It was 1666 and another 'great wave' of the Black Death was set out by Orision to finalize the human population. To increase the chance of success he created a great split in the Earth in the second realm (so it was unknown to humans), more and more cretaurium (a small, stubby creature with three eyes and burnt/rotting skin) were sent to sabotage the humans. We were both 16 at the time and were living in eastern Asia.

We had followed the split in the Earth to South America. Spirits and evil demonic creatures emerged non-stop from the opening, the leader of this mess was Orision. He had organized the creatures and have them spread the plague clear across the human realm and parts of the magical dimensions as well. We somehow managed to lure him to the Burning River to Hell' in the third realm, a river that leads to the core of Hell itself. The evil spirits that get caught in the rapid flow of the river get dragged down and shipped to the devil directly. We had drowned him in the river and his soul got caught in the undertoe. No one knows what happened to him but it was believed that another crack in the Earth emerged and his spirit escaped.

"He's back" I whispered to myself, Fu looked frustrated to be left out of this 'aha' moment and read the inscription Jake scribled in the book. I stood up and pulled out a map of the magical realms, as Gramps and Sun went to inspect the blurb.

"Which realm is the 'Burning River to Hell' in?" I asked Fu, he's obviously seen it before in his 600 years. He finished reading the insert and walked over to the map I had set up on the floor. He pointed to a particular area on the map and it zoomed in on a brilliant blue river, there it is, I smiled.

"Orision's spirit is trying to take over Jake, trying to finish what he started. He believes that Jake was the one who killed him at the river so he's going after him instead of me, also, Jake's sensitive to spiritual activity so it would have been easier to get to him directly. You'd think that being able to be aware of him would give Jake the advantage and he'd be less vulnerable but he's actually closer Orision's magic and was more subjective to his advances." I explained as I showed Fu the area of the river used to defeat Orision, now a religious landmark used for baptisms, renewals and the odd exorcism. How conveinient.

"Wait. How do you know Jake can see ghosts?" Gramps asked a little too shocked, was it that big a secret?

"I'm not stupid. The bluetooth idea was pretty clever though, I'll give him that" I stated and tapped my head. Truth is I saw them too, a bit. And this wasn't the only lifetime he could see spirits, it's got us in a few mix ups before.

"So Jake didn't kill him?" Haley interjected, regretfully I shook my head no,

"Jake was the last one he saw before he died but I was the one who ended up killing him." I said, I felt bad that he was taking the heat for something I did, although, it was a combined effort.

"How did that happen?" she asked confused, her question was unexpected. I remembered what happened though I didn't want to. Everyone was waiting my answer now, it doesn't really matter now... does it? It was so long ago.

"Jake was drowning, Orision had him pinned under the water. I over estimated Jake and thought that I would have time to kill Orision before he would be in any danger. I killed Orision, and ended up killing Jake too... I was wrong and stupid to make that kind of decision, to take that risk. I died a few months later of Spanish Flu as the plague started to break up." I told the quiet faces, I went back to mapping out the portals to the magical realms but the room was quiet all the same,

"You did what you had to do, Cienna. Does Jake know?" Sun comforted, I looked up and saw that they weren't mad or whatever you would be in this kind of situation. They didn't seem overtly shocked, how is it not a big deal to kill someone? Someone they knew, whom half of them are related to!

"Ya, he knows. We talked it over and he's forgiven me." I laughed, not that there was anything to forgive (according to him)

*
"You don't have to apologize, Cienna" Jake said, grinning. "It's not like you planned on killing me or anything." I was in tears at the memory of holding his lifeless body on the river bank. Lives for us by now were pretty much like nintendo lives, you always came back so whats the big deal if that Koopa (a/n is that what the dinosaur thing was called?) killed you? You could just come back and try again. It's sad when you accept the fact that you can't get too attached to the life you're living because eventually it would just end up as failure, or short lived success if you were lucky.

"Maybe, if I-" I started,

"I was already gone. There was nothing you could have done." he interupted. We never spoke about it again. He didn't think it was that big of a deal, I guess it's different if you tried so hard to save someone's life than if you were the one who was brain-dead before you could feel the pain of dying.
*

It still disturbed me but Jake said that I was weird and felt guilty for anything and everything, I thought he was weird for not caring that the person he trusted his life with killed him. I pointed to a place on the map around the top of Long Island,

"There's a portal here, it should take us to the 'Burning River'." I plotted, I had formulated a plan and I pray to God Jake would come out of it alive this time.

Jake's POV

I woke up under a brige somewhere, where am I? My head throbbed and felt like it was going to explode, I looked at myself and saw that I had a hospital gown and my PJ pants that I'd put on at home... wherever that was.

You're safe with me... A voice whispered in my ear, I spun around but no one was there, heavy traffic hummed above my head and gunshots were fired in the distance.

"Who are you? What do you want?" I tried to contain my fear. blood coated my gown, What happened? My pulse raced.

You know what you have to do... It whispered again, what the hell is that suppose to mean? I noticed I was clutching a blade, my sword. It turned into a small dagger and my hand draged the blade up to my wrist, I didn't do that!

You'll listen to me and do what I say or you and everyone around you will die... The voice was dark and menacing... and coming from inside my head!

"I'm going nuts!" I concluded, the blade broke the skin as my hand pressed it deeper into my wrist. I couldn't pull back the blade or drop my wrist, I started to lose it. My heart was beating frantically inside my chest as if, it too, was trying to escape this nightmare.

You are. But I'm still real. It's just you and me from now on... Tears streaked my face as the blade slid horizontally off my wrist.

"Stop... STOP!" I screamed, the blade disconected from my wrist and poised itself vertically at my elbow on the inside of my arm, the way serious cutters would if they wanted to kill themselves.

You'll listen to me won't you?... it asked, obviously pleased with its control and my current state of mind. I nodded quickly and tears continued roll down my cheeks,

I CAN'T HEAR YOU!... It hissed, the blade pressed down and blood leaked from my pores,

"YES! I'll listen! Please don't hurt me!" I could feel It mess around with my mind, making me think things I didn't know were possible, making me feel things (or in this case overreact) that Jake Long, The American Dragon...where ever he was , would not normally display to his opponent. In my mind I could see It grinning, the blade lifted and I regained control of both my hands,

Good. You be a good boy now, afterall we're all we have left... Just you and me now... I sunk to the ground nodding. Would it have been a better idea to have let it kill me?


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I was thinking of not putting up that last part with Jake and Orision to make the story shorter but I thought it would be unfair to just have him disappear for an entire chapter and let Cienna take up the spotlight. The scene is a bit dosturbing thought isn't it. :/ Opinions please!