Reunion

Reuinion

Spigelplatz Academy, Erlernen Mich ein Buch. center of learning for the mythical creatures of North America (Except of course Orcs, nobody likes orcs.) One of the first schools of its kind to open, heralding the new age of education. (It was vitally important that the modern myth be educated, the world was changing rapidly and the young troll on the make had to watch out for things such as rapidly moving cars, machine guns and food additives, these developments could really put a crimp in your tail.)

Taking anyone over the age of 24 (Hey man, when you live to be 4000 that's like kindergarten.) the academy focused on equipping the modern creature with the tools they needed to survive in the rapidly changing world of humans. (Educational tools of course, your average elf, despite a civilization predating man's by almost 9000 years never seemed to get the idea of any technology more advanced than magical bow and arrows.)

Classes included Modern Battle: Out with Knights, in with tanks; Home Economics: The demise of princesses and rise of presidents, and Modern Aviation: Wings, Broomsticks and Planes. Known for its high pass rate (Almost three quarters of entrants met the requirements for graduation, i.e not being eaten during their stay.) and high quality of teaching it had taken merely 25 years for other rival institutions to appear (However too late, during this time unicorns had gone extinct due to being mobbed by little girls.)

Yam Kem Po was one of the first dragon graduates from the academy and had taken its motto to heart, rigorously memorizing a book. Yet, he didn't feel comfortable being back here after all these years. Why did you have to have reunions? It took years to forget about all these people, and then you had to go back here and remember why you'd avoided them for the last twenty years.

He looked around, savoring the memories; the times he was stood on because someone hadn't noticed he was there, that time the teacher's 'dummy' ammunition had actually been live and taken the tip off his tail, the beatings, lynchings and times he'd been flushed into the drainage system (When your body is basically worm shaped, people get tempted.)

"Hey! It's Rips isn't it! How goes it Rips?"

Turning and instinctively looking down (When you're twenty feet long, you learn that it's important to keep an eye on things at ground level.) Yam Kem found he was being addressed by a human male, as far as he could tell (They all looked the same, seriously, what was the difference?) who was possibly a wizard, he certainly looked the part with a long flowing beard and aged complexion. Yam Kem tried to remember where he'd seen him before, was he a teacher of some sort? Wait... 'rips' that was his old nickname in class... of course! Humans aged like anything! They barely lived a century, and spent that time making things as difficult for themselves as possible!

"Hey! It's um... whats-your-name!"

"That's me, still as useless as ever at names eh Rips?"

"Yeah, yeah, amazing to see you here, what have you been up to?"

"Oh I've been building up the agricultural sector in Peru."

"Oh yes? I'm amazed you moved back to the crudhole of a country."

"You wait, one day we'll get the government sorted out, the economy back up, and when that happens, people will want produce!"

"Beans though?"

"Oh yes, you wait, one day Lima will be noted for something else besides it's trade in trouser presses!"

"Hah, sure, if that ever happens, I'll sell you my first born."

"First laid, you mean."

Yam Kem sighed, at least there was someone here who understood him, even if he couldn't remember who the hell he was. They'd been friends years back, almost from his first day here, when he'd tried to eat the surprisingly agile human. (Apparently coming from a country wracked by a civil war so bad that rat became a delicacy tended to vastly improve someone's fighting skills.) Since Yam Kem was the only dragon present and... whatshisname was the only human, and both were often trodden on, they became fast friends. They were both on the chess team (Which is the equivalent of football, mythical creatures love anything that involves kings, queens, knights and castles. Also, the loser often gets eaten, another perk.)

The next hour was spent deep in conversation about the good old days while people moved around the talking two. (Sadly occasionally devouring each other, when you can grow twenty times your normal size over the decades, you look forward to meeting old bullies.) There had been good times and bad (More of the latter than the former.) old friends, many old enemies (Some of whom were messily devoured.) and history to catch up on. Yam Kem was rather disappointed, it seemed that everyone had done something besides him, his friend had gained a knighthood and joined the ancient and dark brotherhood of Grammar, had got married and sired a son, opened several businesses, had his village burned down and lost his tonsils twice. Humans seemed to do everything at once, he hadn't even moved out of his father's basement (The tradition of course is to live with your mother, however, in Yam Kem's case his mother lived in the highest cave in the frost covered mountains of Zool in the land of ice and fire and Yam Kem preferred to live somewhere with modern comforts such as electricity and doors.)

"So then, how's Michelle going?"

"Uh... you remember Cryptopher?"

"Old 'Freddie' the phoenix?"

"Yeah, she's going with him."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that..."

"Yeah; they have better publicity than us dragons, besides, I guess they were more compatible."

"Really? I thought you two got on well..."

Aaah memories, he was barely 90 and his head was full of them, and he had centuries more to go. He'd had a long and wonderful relationship with Michelle, who he'd met downtown at a second hand car dealer's. They'd got along like a house on fire (Screaming, smoke and people running everywhere.) He'd even though of getting his driver's license, but it was not meant to be. There had been too many broken windscreens and late nights

"Hey... Rips? You're kinda spacing out on me here... Rips?"

Yam Kem snapped back to reality. Suddenly he felt very old and alone, which is something very unusual for a dragon to be. (They live to be like, a million and spend centuries in a cave somewhere, sleeping on a gold mattress, it is notable that none of the dragon tongues have a word for 'comfortable' or for that matter, 'fluffy' ) Perhaps he should leave, it wasn't as if there was anything important to be done here anyway. Of course, there were free snacks, and free food was not to be sniffed at. (Viciously attacked and consumed, along with the table, chairs and anyone unlucky enough to be nearby, but  not sniffed at.) Well, there was one way to decide of course, the same way he decided all matters of importance, Rock, Paper, Scissors.

He had been famous for being able to play himself at RPS, without cheating. Indeed, his obsessive use of the game to decide everything from what to wear (This was odd, since, for dragons, as a rule, the answer is usually 'nothing' ) to exam answers (His papers were popular reading in the teachers lounge, and it was widely accepted that his intellect had never been equaled. Surpassed often, but never equaled.) had almost earned himself the nickname 'twoface' except that someone had already taken it. (And they deserved it, for obvious reasons. At SpigelPlatz, when someone was called four-eyes, it wasn't a joke.) (Bonus points to you, the reader if you managed to make sense of this paragraph despite all these footnotes. [Well, not really footnotes, as there are no pages here as such, but you get the idea.])

Yam Kem was surprised at how everyone seemed to find playing yourself at anything was difficult, he could play chess with his tail for hours (Most of the time being spent either looking up how the pieces moved, arguing over rules, chasing himself or untangling the many body-knots this caused.) all you had to do was not let your right hand know what the left was doing.

"Hey there! I remember you!"

Doing his traditional 'face the speaker and look down' routine only to be confronted with a lot of neck, it took him a brief moment to realize that he was being addressed by someone almost his height. Three someones in fact, but then again, no.

Yam Kem checked off the valid points; snakelike, yes, multiple heads, yes, tendency towards blue coloration, definitely. Yep, that was a hydra from tail to snouts. A familiar one too...

"Oh no! You stay away from me!"

"What? Why? Is this about the prom?"

"You tried to eat me! Without asking!"

"It was your fault for smelling so tasty!"

"That was cologne!"

"It was barbecue sauce. Why in the name of the six moons of nasreem would you want to go out smelling like a buffet?"

"Humans do it all the time, of course, they don't have to worry about having their ribs used as toothpicks!"

"Humans are odd all over, they use whale vomit for perfume, why would you listen to anything they say?"

"Cheeseburgers."

"Cheeseburgers?"

"You don't get out much, when you have one, you'll understand. Nobody who invented that could be wholly wrong about anything."

The first thing to do would be to check the exits; and most of them were blocked. Curses.He could always try to hide in the crowd, or disguise himself as a roll of carpet. Of course, he was larger now and could try self defense, though it really would be three-on-one. Best make a distraction until he could find a clear escape.

"Well... I see you have a new head..."

"Yeah, cut myself shaving."

"Um... that's rather odd."

"I don't like to talk about it."

"Right. Well Ms... Ms.."

"Jugemu-jugemu Gokonosurikire Kaijarisuigyo-no Suigyomatsu Unraimatsu Furaimatsu Kunerutokoroni-sumutokoro Yaburakojino-burakoji Paipopaipo-paiponoshuringan Shuringanno-gurindai Gurindaino-ponpokopino-ponpokonano Chokyumeino-chosuke."

"Uh... yeah. Mind if I call you Chosuke?"

"Oh no, everyone does!"

Oh yes, Yam Kem remembered now. She was from a very good family apparently, and one of the marks of good breeding was being able to trace your ancestors back to a puddle of primordial slime. Of course since hydrae et al lived so very long, they could afford to keep track of their breeding in more... unusual manners. (Of course he had twelve names himself, but this was more due to the fact that mom wasn't sure just who the father had been, and so had tacked everything together.) It had been, one of his fathers assured him, a great opportunity when they had been introduced, her father was a big man in the emerald industry, owning dozens of flooded mines. (Being able to breathe underwater has its advantages.) Sadly, things had ended badly, as they often did when it looked as if life had something pleasant in store. Yam Kem had negative karma.

Negative karma, quite simply, is what balances up all those billionaire business executives that waste their money on such things as fur lined swimming pools and diamond encrusted lobsters. People often assume that such people will reincarnate as worms or lawyers, (Though in the case of Paris Hilton this may have already happened, nobody really knows what could possibly balance things up.) to teach them lessons, though others have always wondered how, if they wouldn't remember the previous life, how these lessons really stuck. However, the universe is more pragmatic than this, evening karma out at the present time. For every Posh spice, there was a starving kid in Africa. The fact that the two had nothing in common wasn't the point, the universe didn't care about these things any more than it wondered about how electrons felt powering a circuit. And so it was that Yam Kem spent his time learning deep and meaningful lessons about nt being prideful, or sharing, or the importance of planning, without actually living through the rather pleasant events that would have necessitated them.

"Right, well before you do anything, I'd like to make one thing clear."

"Yes?"

"Five moons. it was the FIVE moons of nasreem, the legend was very explicit."

"I don't think so! It only gave three lines to astrology!"

"No, no, I mean it was very explicit. I had to look up several of the words it used, and I really don't think that was proper behavior, even for gods."

"Oh, well... yes. Um... how are things?"

"Oh not so bad, my tail grew back, and you can hardly see the bite marks."

"Would it help if I apologized?"

Yam Kem kept a reserved attitude, as was appropriate since Chosuke was still three times his length and destined to grow longer almost indefinitely. This made the conversation rather difficult since controversial topics such as politics, nationality and the jelly vs jam (Exceedingly important in mythological circles.) had to be avoided. However Yam Kem was the veteran (Literally.) of many years of such conversations, and could thus go on at length about such trivial things as the weather, the outcome of various sporting events or the benefits of mustard over catsup. It annoyed him however, somewhere deep in the scarred pt of his soul, that no matter how old you got, your conversations were stuck at the level of teenagers. And there was always the uncomfortable silence, waiting in the shadows to pounce like... some big sneaky pouncing thing. There really was nothing worse than having a conversation cgrind to a slow and faltering halt, leaving both participants stranded and searching desperately for something to get things going again.

"Um, are you ok?"

"What?"

"You've just been sitting there, staring into space for several minutes now, as if listening to some kind of internal narration."

"Oh that happens a lot. Mother says I'm special."

"Uh-huh. Hey! What happened to that Ford you were seeing?"

"Oh we had to break up, quite literally actually. I guess it just wasn't meant to be."

"I wonder who decides what was meant? Maybe we could threaten to eat them unless given special treatment, like less heads for one thing."

"Are you crazy? I'd give anything to have three! I'd have designated snacking head, and one for TV and the third for...well I'll think fo something."

"What's TV?"

"It's like radio, but with pictures."

"Radio?"

Aaah, how slowly innovation moved through a community where the average lifetime was measured in centuries! Yam Kem had been told just the previous week that humanity had come up with a brilliant invention known as the horse collar, and had mused that the magic in the world hadn't really gone away, so much as sat there while humans had paved over it. It was no wonder humans didn't believe in it anymore, even though a new movement known as creationism was trying to preserve the true history of things.

"Magic, voices flying through the air. Anyway, what's wrong with extra heads?"

"You can't get less, only more, for one thing, and after you get about a dozen, your blood supply runs out and you die. And each head is another target, my aunt died when she walked into a windmill last decade."

"Wow. The more you know huh?"

"Oh yes. This conversation seems to be going well, would you like some alcohol?"

"Yes, I'm not injured yet, I feel like celebrating."


And with that, the story ended, and everyone lived (relatively) happily ever after. (except for a few card carrying villains, who naturally didn't live through the night.) This was actually not meant to happen, as the events of the night were meant to include a rather disoriented basilisk, and because of this, through a long and convoluted chain of causality, the Gulf War was started, followed by the election of Bush and the current fracas. This just goes to show what happens when an author suffers premature termination, and stories aren't given satisfying closures.