California Dreaming (Prodigy)

Danny lost her fight. The gang of magical, beautiful assistants laid waste to Danny and her magical bracelet with their own style of copying abilities using their magical mirrors to create duplicates of Danny while they continued to fight with the abilities they learned at magician assistant school. It was effective enough to beat Danny down while the Great Manifesto De Destino took the greatest treasure and vanished into the night. The beautiful assistants, a trio of women with brown hair left Danny tapped in a box with a saw hanging above it while they followed their leader out of the room with the greatest treasure ever in tow. Slowly the blade would descend to eventually cut Danny in half, as she typed out a text message to the rest of her group, hoping someone could get there in time to hep her out.

The museum where Danny followed the magician looked completely inconspicuous  other than the signals Danny sent before engaging the magician after tracking him down on a lead given to Danny after a cheerleading competition. Brown walls with banners telling of a long, lost artifact from the ancient world of Canada lined the building. A few days ago, the prestigious lost antiquities of the great north exhibit made its way into California under the guise of a protected writ from the young agency of Prodigy. Now, the only representative who managed to show up, after cheerleading practice no less, kicked against a tri-spaced box with her legs, while a blade swung from the ceiling, coming closer to cut her in half.

Manifesto de Destino kept his cape in tact as he and his magic assistants made their way from the museum towards the haunted amusement park on the outskirts of town. Nothing more than the practicality of his illusions needed to do anything to carry the quartet away with the artifacts they stole- and a magic bracelet they took from a seventeen year old with more spirit than brains. Hey, it least it made it so the multiple pieces of her would not need to argue over who got to keep the bracelet.

So it seemed Isolation and being all emo in the middle of the Alaskan Canadian wilderness got Xiao no answers, only more trouble with hunters, treasure seekers, and the attempted mind control of evil alien Kaijus.

After flying Jumping across several northern states, she got on a Bus to head back to Los Angeles, and got off at a Bus Station down town. Months of being away meant her phone had been inactive, and it took a quick visit to the service provider to bring it back to life. Her phone and mail were flooded with messages and missed calls, but Danny's urgent message immediately got her attention. A friend was in trouble, and Xiao immediately felt the need to help.

Still wearing her "walking the earth" outfit of a Canadian winter coat, hoodie, jeans and boots, Xiao was off in a single bound, rocketing skyward in the direction the text message. The sight of the city was one of the first things Xiao realized she missed on her foray to Canada- the view was alot nicer with mountains and trees compared to this urban landscape. No matter.

The News would definitely be covering it tonight. A blur in the sky as onlookers spot some kind of girl hurtling through the sky.

"Is it a bird? Is it a plane?" Came the tired cliche questions.

"Is it Dragon Girl?" "I think it is!" "It can't be, Dragon Girl is MIA!" Los Angeles Twitter would be all abuzz and Instagram flooded with a hundred blurry photos of the "blur". Social Media would be all about the metahuman sighting for the next fifteen minutes, then would go back to pictures of babes in Bikinis and people playing with their Corgis.

After a few jumps she landed in the general vicinity of the appointed place. On landing, the dusty, grimy smell of the city parted to reveal the distinct perfume Danny wore. Xiao never forgets a smell. Following her nose, Xiao runs off, her duffel bag bouncing behind on her back, its protective lining shielding it from the intense vibrations of being Dragon Girl's bag.

"Danny?! DANNY!!!" Xiao called out to her friend a few times, her voice really carrying. The sight of a deathtrap and the smell of recent combat pushed her into action, as Xiao rips the poor, innocent pendulum of death out of its ceiling attachment and then opens Danny's box like a 5 year old opens presents.

If Danny was alright, Anxiety would be replaced by a hug of relief as Xiao smushed The Sphinx against herself. "Danny?! Are you alright? I'm so sorry I was away... who did this???"

A loud ruckus banged off the walls of the box keeping Danny entombed. Off in the distance the impending swing of the blade sounded out. A thud rang out down the hall. With each pass of the blade, so came the echo of footsteps. One by one they become thunderous, monstrous, magnificent. The top to the box flew open, letting Danny hop out of the box with the help of Xiao's massive strength. "Yeah, I'm good. Some magician stole everything from the druid exhibit. I tried to stop him, but he had more back up than I did." Danny held back from criticizing Xiao for her lateness. At least she came. "Well, anyways, I know where he went, but the old amusement park is far, so can I get a ride?"

An abandoned carnival dedicated to a haunted mine dominated the western face of the forest. Long ago an iron baron made his home in a giant mansion build next to the mine, since then the mansion underwent a great number of restorations to bring it back to life and a Ferris wheel and a rollercoaster running through the mountain added more attractions. The problem came when the physics behind the rollercoaster failed to take in the vacuum effect of the roller coaster and ended up decapitating half of the ride. Further adding to the haunting of the park. Ten years wore hard on the maintenance, taking the restored mansion back into a state of disrepair.

From the entrance before Danny and Xaio a large fortune teller would stand as the only thing of any use directly in the part. While shadows dominated every other corner, the fortune teller remained fully lit and operational. "I guess I should call one of the cheerleader sponsors and tell them my guardian came to pick me up, so they won't worry too much." Still in her cheerleading outfit, Danny fit in perfectly to any background of a horror movie featuring teenagers, but caught the attention of something else.

"You there!"

Danny spun around to Xiao, seeing if the voice came from her. Surprised, Danny turned back.

"Yes, you there!" None of the shadows talked, nor did the buildings, but something kept calling. "You in the bright outfit, and you-the very tall girl!"

Now Danny knew what called for her, but did not want to fully accept it. "Xiao. Is that fortune teller machine talking to you too?"

Xiao securely carries Danny in her arms and does less powerful superjumps, to avoid injuring her teammate. "Hang on and don't look down." After a couple dozen or so of block clearing leaps, they'd get to their destination, leaping over medium rise buildings, college parties, suburbs, pools, an empty stadium, a parking building, an LBGT parade and a bird watching group in the park who definitely gasped at the sight of Xiao.

Abandoned Haunted Carnival

Landing with little fanfare but alot of dust, Xiao finally lets Danny down. The jumping had totalled her jeans, but at least now they were shredded jeans. She also leaves her Canadian winter coat at the entrance, A black tank top showing the baby dragon fat had melted off Xiao's arms.

Xiao took in the smell of abandoned carnival, making disapproving sounds with her nose. The Fortune Teller coming to life surprised her, and she nearly totalled the booth with her fist, but held back at the last minute.

"Yes. What is this thing? Is that a person inside?" Xiao didn't watch that much western cartoons and was unfamiliar around the object before her. She sniffed around to see if she could catch the smell of people passing through recently, or if the Fortune Teller was alive... or just mechanical.

The silence around the carnival flickered in between breaks between the confused conversation between two, possibly three, people - or at least things capable of talking. "I don't know. It's talking to us-"

"Now, I can do more than talk-" The wooden mouth flapping as the doll inside the booth continued to talk as the lights in the eyes kept flickering. "I can even make you offers. Now, from the way I see it, two good looking girls-"

"Seventeen creepo. I know how to use a woodchipper."

"Well, the way I reckon it, you two need to find the guy and his gals who just came through these parts right?"

"This is weird." Danny turned to walk off towards the servant's quarters of the mansion, near the hedge maze before the mansion. Two shadowy figures watched from the hedges as Danny entered in. One leg stepped out onto the path.

"Well, she seems hard headed, but you're as sharp as you are tall, and I've seen some tall ones before, my father was a sycamore. Now, those gals are still lurking around here, but I can help you look like them if you just bring em here."

Off in the shadows of an amusement shop, a third figure watched as Xiao stood before the booth, pulling out a box and beginning to wind up a crank on the side as she crept up behind Xiao.

"Now, I know you're wondering why I would tell you things like this and try to help ya, but to be honest, I just want to lift a curse placed upon me and I think you can do that. Oh, by the way, you might wanna move your head to the left a little." A blond haired woman wearing a little black dress shot out a clown from a jack in the box in her hands. The clown would shoot towards Xiao's head with a vibrating gear connected to its head. Even against Xiao's toughness, the overall goal of the object in general sought to shoot enough force into the skull to trigger a concussion. A little magic trick for the magician who needs a tool for everyjob.

Xiao practiced her super listening skills to hear out what the wooden fortune teller had to say, giving her a chance to speak. Danny was quick to dismiss the mannequin and walked off, but Xiao was still a bit curious about the strange item. She could always follow behind Danny by scent. Definitely not creepy at all.

The wooden gypsy offered to help in exchange for a service. Xiao was taught to take deals with great caution. "...What curse are you talking about, and how would I do it?" She then gave an instruction to evade just when Xiao heard something faint behind her. She reacted thanks to the warning, the concussion clown missing its mark and hitting the fortune teller glass, cracking or breaking it depending on whether it was tempered safety glass or something cheapo.

Xiao tries to grab the clown weapon and yank it out of the attacker's hands, then in a show of superhuman force zips towards the blonde in a few strides. Not a speedster but still quicker than most land mammals had any right to be. Assuming all went as planned, Xiao tries to go for the one handed lift by the collar routine, and puts on a mean face and utters one of her rehearsed one liners from one of those action movies. "Not very smart. Who sent you?"

Every step Danny took through the hedges echoed through the maze. She kept moving. Slowly, sometimes quickly, but always moving forward. Or, at least she thought she kept going forward. Her hands separated the grove to show a metal grated fence in between the rows of hedges. Nothing too special, but it meant Danny would not get much leeway with cheating her way out of this. Most of the path still remained lined in gravel, but a few patches allowed the thicket of weeds to crack through.  The echoing continued as Danny trekked forth. Something in the distance sparked in the window of the mansion. Some sign of life continued inside, but a loose rock took Danny's cadence off step. The echo continued behind her. "Xiao?"

Danny snapped around to see no friendly faces greeting her. Two more blond assistants wearing the LBDs stepped out from the hedges. One stepped forward with a bracelet in her hand. "Looking for this?"

"About that-" Danny stepped forward, remembering losing the fight when she had the bracelet. "Later." Instead of stepping up to the plate, Danny jumped up to  grab the metal fencing between the hedges. A hand grabbed her ankle as she scaled the fence, but could not hold Danny in place as she hopped down and took off running towards the entrance.

Xiao lifted the assistant into the air, not giving her a whole lot of room to communicate.

"I can fill that in for you." The fortune teller in the box with the broken glass spoke up. "She is nothing more than the run of the mill hired goon, but this guy likes the magician thing a little too much, so he classes it up. Gotta say it beats tattoos and ski masks and I think one of them is good at acrobatics, but still these three ladies are nothing more than the muscle this guy uses to enforce while he does the magic to steal stuff."

Danny made her way to the edge of the maze, starring out towards Xiao, just as two women tackled her to the ground.

"There's a couple more over there." A wooden arm pointed up while the body rotated on a swivel towards the maze entrance.

Xiao waited for the goon to start talking, but realized only when the wooden fortune teller spoke that perhaps she was holding her wrong. Now her dilemma was in how to disable the thug without maiming her too much. She opts for taking away her jack-in-the-box and tossing it to the ground, followed by a crunchy foot stomp. There, no more weapon, at least.

Xiao looked around and dragged the thug to the merry-go-round, tying her to the railing with another piece of railing, bending the  1/2" steel pipe like it was a straw. If the thug so much as tried to budge, she'd get a stern. "Don't even think about it."

Then she sees Danny in a dilemma and zips over. Again, one handed lifts for both of the thugs, followed by, "You two weren't on planning on hurting my friend now, were you?" She asked with a snarky, heroic politeness.

Assuming she manages that, came the intimidating bluff. "Now... I'll give you both a chance to tell me why I shouldn't smash your skulls together like eggs. Like, about your boss, what he has in store, and where he is exactly inside." She asked, channeling draconic fear in her voice and a certain other person's scowl. Though of course, it was the dragon with the rep for damage, not the dragon girl. Even then, her rampages were usually casualty free.

Danny tried prying herself out from the grips of the two assistants holding her down, but when Danny only needed to rub a bracelet to get fighting skills, she neglected ever getting any real skills of her own. "We'll make sure you don't get out of the box this time." Both assistants help Danny to her feet. All three stopped moving for different reasons when Xiao stood before them. "Um. Our boss just knows how to do magic and steal things. He's in the mansion. Are we good to leave?"

"No!" Danny pushed herself out of the women's grips before looking for something to tie them up with. "Xiao. We need to get inside of this place. The only problem with you turning into a dragon is that there are rare artifacts in there. And you don't have great coordination in dragon form. Also, your anger management could use some work and you tend to go anti-chill and break stuff."

"I could be of assistance there." The mannequin chimed in. "How's it going there honey, long time no talk." Danny merely gazed as the wooden eyebrows on the fortune teller moved up and down. "I can make magic disguises for the two of you so you can look like these three you have under custody right now. It could at least hide the girl with giant aspirations and stature."

Xiao obliged with the tying up of the goons using some steel pipe from nearby railings, sitting them against a nearby wall and using the pipes to keep them there. She then does the responsible thing and called the police of the presence of these accomplices to the thefts.

"911 What is your emergency?" Came the dispatcher's voice.

"Hello? Police? I would like to report robbers at the abandoned amusement park. Like, I saw two superheroes tie them up!" She said, doing a drastically different voice from her usual engrish accent. Somehow she picked up a pretty convincing valley girl voice.

"I see and who is this calling?" Dispatch responded.

"A... concerned citizen." Xiao decided to remain anonymous.

"I see. Units will be dispatched and arriving in ten to fifteen minutes. Please do not interfere with the vigilantes for your own safety."

After that Xiao locks the screen on her phone and listens to the suggestion. "Yes. Dragon form and indoors is not a good mix. A disguise is a good idea, but if you can not hide my height it would be useless." Xiao returned to prop up the fortune teller mannequin's booth, then looked at Danny. "... Can we trust the wooden lady?"

"If you can't trust a wooden fortune teller, who can you trust nowadays?" A pair of wooden hands moved past a magic orb. Lightning shot from side to side as the image of Xiao and Danny began to form in the ball.

"You're more of a 'what' than a 'who' to be honest, but to answer your first question. Well, I think the unstoppable dragon girl could be more trustworthy with getting us the relics back safe and sound." As Danny continued to speak about the risks involved, Xaio began to feel herself declining in height to match that of Danny. As the two girls saw their hair color change to a more yellow complexion, so did their attire change into the black dresses seen by the assistants. "Well, I guess we aren't waiting for acknowledgement of a 'yes' or 'no'. I guess we have proper disguises. Now we just need to get into that mansion. Shouldn't be too hard."

The pathway to the mansion needed some yard work, but for the most part it looked safe enough. None of the lights shined down upon it, but the front door to the mansion looked perfectly lit up in perspective to the rest of the place. "So I guess we knock on the door?" Danny turned to Xiao to see if her expertize could come in handy, but in her shortened state, something kept Xiao from expressing her full strenght. Same for Danny, except, without her bracelet, Danny was the exact same with or without the disguise hampering her.

Xiao watched her world become slightly bigger as her perspective became smaller, doors actually being taller than her now. The transformation left her with a funny feeling in her stomach, and she felt dizzy for a minute.

"Oooh..." She clutched her head as she followed behind Danny towards the Mansion's rear entrance. "How do we undo it?" Xiao murmured to Danny, just after she asked for a door opener.

"Okay stand back, you don't want splinters in your hair." Xiao said with that nonchalant confidence. She reached for the knob, intent on ripping it out. The door wouldn't be harder to open than paper... on a normal day for the dragon girl.

"What the..." The door knob was either made of the strongest metal on earth, or Xiao had finally realized what it felt to be weak. She tried to budge it open a few more times, usually this was where the part where the door would be relieved of its hardware.

"I think that wooden fortune teller took my strength when she transformed me!" Xiao exclaimed in horror, unable to defeat the despicable door of dastardliness. What was Dragon Girl without her powers or her freakish height? an amateur boxer, at best. Dragon Girl sighed.

"What are we going to do now..." she whined, looking around. If she was Ellie, how would she get in? pick the lock on the door? Xiao couldn't do that. Then she spotted a rock, picked it up and went to a window. Xiao hesitated a moment, wondering if she was going to get hurt.

"Maybe I should throw this instead of bashing the window in..." Xiao speculated, standing some five feet from the window. She tossed the rock, but, unable to gauge normal strength, the stone went only four feet and landed in the dirt. How embarrassing.

Danny watched the rock fall limply to the ground. "Wow, that is unimpressive." The rock did not move. The window remained unbroken. "It's kind of sad. And I'm telling you that to your face and not your chest. This is one weird, world we live in." Danny reached down, grabbed a rock, and threw it through the window. "Wait. This isn't a good idea!" Before Danny could realize her mistake, the floor beneath her and Xaio collapsed, sending the two girls deep beneath the mansion.

The drop eventually turned into a slide, keeping the two girls from falling several stories to a certain death. Danny fell on top of Xiao, rolling off and looking around the room. Off in the corner sat all of the relics, locked behind bars. "Alright, so we need to use both our brains for this. That's probably going to be about as good as if we both needed to use our super strength." Danny continued to write checks about Xiao's intelligence she would one day need to cash, but for now Danny kept looking around the basement. "We might be able to take this bench and ram that door. It's worth a shot."

"The two of you are quite destructive for henchwomen." A masked man stepped down the stairs to greet the duo dropped down the chute.

"Xiao, play it smart." Danny whispered to Xaio before turning back to the magician. "We are just trying to make sure no one is hiding down here. We heard a noise outside."

His cape ran down to the knees of his slacks, covering the back of his tuxedo jacket. "I hear there have been troubles tonight. Major problems out in the carnival concerning a certain curse. It looks like it may need some investigation into it. I was going to send you two to check it out, but I don't think you'll be leaving here."

"...Yeah, yeah. A noise. I saw two people out there. Some kind of Nancy drew type meddling kids. We thought it would be fun to chase em off wearing costumes. They must be this close to figuring things out." Xiao objected, after a brief moment to think of something, maybe getting her references sort of wrong.

"But we completely spoiled this trap you didn't tell us about. I thought teamwork was about communication. How can we work in these conditions? I swear the henchman's union'll hear about this." Xiao mouthed off, really making things up.

"Yeah, those Nancy Drews are always up to something." Danny still gripped the bench she planned on using as a ram. "Yeah and the costumes we picked up were-" Well, the costumes were just the black dresses the other henchwomen wore.

Calling them costumes brought a twirl to the villains mustache. "I have told you, they are not costumes; they are performance piece enhancements. Oh never mind. I guess I can't have normal henchwomen like that one fortune teller who disappeared after robbing a bank and was never seen from- henchman union! I made it very clear that I want nothing to do with their- why were you looking for those girls down here again?"

"Uh, we heard something by the um- things you took, from the-"

"You're that girl from the museum! Just with a blond wig on."

"Blond wig! That dummy said it was a full disguise!" In case her visage did little to reveal her true form, Danny made sure to shatter the illusion. She looked over to see if Xiao grew any bigger. Nope. That dummy and her promises had some explaining to do.  "Well, I guess it's time for-" Before Danny could take more than two steps closer a bouquet of flowers landed between her and Xiao. The stems fell flat with the thud of metal. "Uh-oh." The flash bomb went off, dazing Danny and knocking her to the ground.

"Well, I guess I can try and see if that trick every other famous magician has tried really does have a one hundred percent mortality rate."