seymoure

32.

In the nano-second it took to turn from the incinerated Mr. Position towards the source of the blast of flame, the fire was interrupted.

What they saw was back of a woman who seemed to be turning the flames aside. Her arms were extended and she was wearing a short cape that billowed with her.

In the time it took them to stand the flame stopped.

The woman turned and ran to Position’s body, that lay crumpled across the podium. She shouted into a circle on the wrist band she wore on her left arm.

“Lazarus, lecture hall, now!” She commanded.

David was struck by her self confidence. And her beauty.

She was black and had an amazing amount of swirling black hair offsetting her soft features.

“You are thinking too much about girls,” Came Mickey’s voice in his head.

Mickey looked back towards the source of the blaze, and was truly speechless.

There stood a dragon.

A real, live, honest to Jack Kirby dragon.

A small boy stood stroking the beasts golden mane. The dragon was a rainbow of shades of green. He did look like one of the creatures you might find in an old Jack Kirby-Stan Lee giant monster comic.

“Fin Fang Foom!” David gasped

Mickey nodded in recognition.

“Don’t worry,” said the boy.

The dragon pushed his hand for more petting.

“I am Emo, I control emotions.” The boy told them, “I have calmed him. We’ll get him back to containment as soon as the right people get here.”

At this juncture a man in a robe that included a hood that obscured his head. The figure hurried past all of them, and moved down beside the woman at the podium.

“All of you, get out!” The woman insisted.

By the time she said this, the dragon and the boy were already gone.

The boys and their companions in the room exited with haste.

The woman turned back and closed the door, with herself on the outside.

That instant a blue light escaped under the doorway.

“I’m sorry to be so brusque, but there was no time,” she told the youngsters.

“What happened?” Mickey said incredulously.

“The attacking force was able to sabotage Rugglestump’s containment, so he was still in his battle mode and had no other enemies to fight.”

Carvine picked up something off the floor, Mickey saw and found another of its like near him.

He recognized it right away.

“Dragon pearls!” He said triumphantly.

“Just like a clam can get a grain of sand in its shell and cover it with a liquid that ultimately becomes a pearl, the same thing happens with the dragon’s scales. After the pearl becomes large enough it simply falls out.” The woman told them, with the tone that identified her as a teacher.

“Who are you?” One of the twins asked.

“I am Dr. Amelia Thursday,” She said off handedly as she looked back at the door and saw there was no longer light escaping from under it, “The call me The Protector since nothing, as yet, had been found that
can hurt me or anyone under my protection.”

The door opened and the man with the hood exited the room, followed by a totally bald Mr. Xavier Postion. The recently deceased man was apparently blind, since you could only see whites on his eyeballs.

The man in the hood walked him away.

“Wasn’t he dead?” Carvine asked.

“He got better,” Mickey said with a laugh.

“He will continue to get better. In a week or so he will be back to his old, annoying self,” Dr. Thursday informed them.

The band on Thursday’s wrist beeped, and she put it to her ear.

“Certainly,” She said.

The doctor opened the door and looked back at them.

“Come along,” she said, “I’m in charge of you now.”

David was very happy.