and

Things get done quickly after the short 'conversation' Kyouya has with the three.

Kyouya gets his new clothes, the material feeling no different than usual. However, Spanner takes great enthusiasm in demonstrating how durable a small square of the material is from bullets and flame and knives and it goes on for quite a while.

He ends up letting Fuuta rank him because the demigod looks like a small animal and gets really excited when he ranks things. Kyouya doesn't look at the results because he likes surprises more but the two mannequins take a look and give him wide eyed stares for a while afterwards.

Kyouya really likes the tonfas Shoichi gives him, because it has chains now and he's never used chains before. Extending his reach from close range to mid-range can only cause more destruction and make him a better fighter so he forgives them for the string incident.

It also makes up Kyouya's mind and after he's tucked away the rest of his belongings, he passes over the red armband, cut because of the blond fallen's odd knives.

"Can you fix this as well?" Kyouya asks.

Spanner holds out a hand and when he grips the material he raises an eyebrow. As soon as he touched it he felt the loss of control over his threads, the constant hum under his skin cutting off almost violently and even his stitches start unwinding in his palm, the magic keeping him together losing focus and dissipating. It'll be irreversible if Spanner holds it for long enough but for now he'll be fine.

Spanner examines the armband, ignoring his body falling apart. The red fabric is simply cotton while the gold thread of a bird in flight is radiating power; a strong binding sequence of rune drawn into every strand, unseen even to a normal supernatural but Spanner's adjusted eye magnifies it.

He blinks and looks back up at Kyouya. "This is a very strong seal. What is it for?"

"To bind me," Kyouya says.

"I thought you were human?" Shoichi interrupts.

"I am."

"Then what do you have that's so powerful something like this is needed?" Spanner asks, eyes focused on the binding again.

Kyouya shrugs.

Spanner shrugs back. "This is beyond my expertise, you'll have to go to a mage for this."

"A really strong one as well," Shoichi adds in, peering over Spanner's shoulder at the armband. "You're better off going to the Alpha mage," Shoichi jokes.

"Where is the Alpha?" Kyouya demands.

Spanner nods to a mannequin portal, a huge daunting machine near the door with lots of dials and tubes winding around it. "The portal is already set," Spanner says light heartedly, continuing the joke.

Neither of them expect Kyouya to snatch back the armband and stride straight for the machine, although they really should have.

"Wait, you can't just-!" Shoichi flails but Kyouya is already gone, the machine spitting out smoke.

...

Kyouya appears in front of a shop that already smells of strange incense even with the door closed. He looks around but enters the shop anyway. It's cluttered and the walkways are squished between towering shelves of dusty leather books and oddly shaped glass jars full of even more odd substances.

Kyouya steps past the unmanned counter and slips through the red velvet curtain, finding himself in a massive room, far bigger than what the outside of the store reveals, and far bigger than what's logically possible. There's a man sitting at the sole table in the very middle, the wood a dark black with light grey detailing.

"Welcome, Kyouya," the Alpha mage greets politely. "Would you like a seat?"

Another chair appears opposite the mage and a tray dissolves into being with tea and biscuits on it. Kyouya doesn't bother asking how the man knows his name or when Kyouya would arrive. He approaches and takes a seat, reaching out to place the armband on the table in between the two.

"What, no hello?" the Alpha chuckles.

"Hello, Alpha mage," Kyouya parrots politely. It is odd that Kawahira is being so friendly but that might just be his personality. Not all Alphas have to be arrogant and derisive.

"I haven't seen you in years," the mage hums, picking up the armband.

Kyouya blinks. "We haven't met before."

Kawahira pauses and looks up at Kyouya. "Oh, well you were taller the last time I saw you. I must have been slipping into different time streams. It's a bad habit of mine." He smiles. "Would you like to know a possible future, Kyouya?"

Kyouya shrugs, uncaring either way.

Kawahira's smile widens to a grin. "You're going to be having a lot of fun."

Kyouya leans forward in his seat. "What kind of fun?" he demands, his lips quirking up.

"That would be telling," Kawahira chuckles slyly.

Kyouya huffs and steals a biscuit, slumping back in the seat and biting into the treat. Kawahira stands and moves to the back of the large room, furniture coming into being as he walks past, the items blurring and solidifying so that when the mage stops, the entire room has filled with his workshop.

Tables line the walls with at least a dozen computer screens and quite a few cubby holes with neatly labelled boxes. It's spacious and modern and nothing at all like the shop out the front. Kawahira immediately starts up the computer closest to him and searches through his books on file.

Kyouya eats the biscuits and drinks the tea (which stays at a perfect warmth) while watching the occasional splashes of colour and lights from Kawahira. Eventually he gets tired and starts nodding off, waking with every shift from the mage or hiss of magic.

A bed appears to the side, a four poster mammoth with heavy black curtains. Kyouya slides a glance to Kawahira but the man doesn't turn around. Kyouya stands and moves over to pull the curtain open. It looks normal so he slips inside and pulls the curtain shut.

The sound suddenly cuts off and Kyouya whips open the curtain again in panic because he knows he can't defend from an Alpha mage. If the man wants to keep him here, then there is nothing Kyouya can do -

The sound returns when the curtain parts and Kawahira looks over his shoulder, apologetic.

"To help you sleep," the Alpha says. "I'm not caging you." The man has such empathy in his eyes when he looks at Kyouya.

"How well do you know me?" Kyouya murmurs.

Kawahira smirks. "Spoilers."

...

Kyouya rolls his eyes, shuts the curtain, and falls asleep.

He wakes when the curtain is wrenched open and Kawahira stands over him with a manic smile on his face.

"It's almost done!" Kawahira laughs. "Whoever made it is a genius, the runes are –"

Kyouya stops listening at that point, yawning widely behind a raised hand as he sits up. "What did you want, Alpha? You said almost finished."

Kawahira trails off and blinks. "Oh, right. I need dragon blood, and I'm all out." He shrugs. "The next delivery is in three weeks so you could stay, but you're on a time limit, so up you get." Kawahira smiles and strides away back to the bench.

The curtain falls shut, cancelling out the sound once more, and Kyouya flops back down. Why is he on a time limit? Whatever.

Dragons are creatures fifty storeys high with scales that can defend from even mage magic, talons that cut through diamond and flames hotter than the Earth's magma. They hoard like in the fairy tales but instead of gold it's whatever catches their fancy. One notable dragon has even made it a habit to kidnap princesses, which didn't last for long since princesses don't live as long as dragons do.

A dragon's hoard is an all-consuming need for the creature, which means they also need a safe place to store it and such burrows are near impossible to find in this modern world. Dragons also have incredibly valuable parts that are used in a wide variety of spells and items. They stay away from others, natural considering their high price on the market, and fight like category ten hurricanes with a side of tsunami and forest fire.

Due to that and the ridiculously long lifespan for an Earth bound creature, they don't tend to have kids often, which means the amount of dragons left number in the dozens.

All of these factors combine to assure that there is no way to find such a creature, apart from the very Alpha of the race who can't escape the public eye no matter how hard they try due to the many invasive spies of the other races.

Kyouya shrugs to himself. Alpha it is then.

...

Kyouya appears in a dead volcano thanks to the mage's spell and stumbles a bit from the sudden transport. That did not feel like a hunter gate at all. It was a smoother transition, without the sudden jerk that accompanies a technology based teleport, but it was… dusty.

Kyouya sneezes.

The sound echoes loudly around the cavernous room, bouncing off rough and jagged walls with jewels and preciously metals embedded within. Kyouya turns and blinks, his back facing the wall now. Where he stands is simply rock but only a few meters away is a steep hill.

The entire room is flooded with gold coins and diamonds with platinum trimmings. The hills of riches have low dips and valleys like the desert and its mounds of sand. It looks like something incredibly large has dug pathways into the shiny metals.

The ceiling is arched with stalactites and opens at the very top to let in sunlight that reflects off the riches and keeps the air from becoming stale. The sound of what appears to be a slow drip of water echoes somewhere to the left, and Kyouya can faintly see something like a pool of water with even more gold inside.

He starts walking forward and only pauses when he reaches the start of the gold. He has no idea how stable the coins are, but he might as well since he's here already.

Kyouya takes a few cautious steps and the gold shifts around his feet, clinking together noisily and making him sink in a few centimetres like real sand. He frowns but keep going, staggering occasionally when the difficult terrain doesn't move the way Kyouya predicts.

He gets to the top of the hill and scans the cave, not seeing any dragon within the gold. He squints a little, trying to see if the dragon was in view but simply camouflaged. Nope, nothing.

Kyouya takes a hesitant step down the others side of the mound and his foot sinks in until everything below his knee has been swallowed. A startled noise leaves him and he tumbles forward, falling down the hill. He curls into a ball and rolls with the momentum in effort to try and regain control.

He hits the bottom of the drop, his shoulders taking most of the impact, and uncurls with a flop. He blinks at the high ceiling in a daze, wondering a bit childishly if he could do that again except with a sled, and then sits up slowly, his head still spinning a little. An eye blinks at him from within a mound of gold that he just fell down.

Well, Kyouya found the dragon.

It rises up, the gold exploding outwards and rushing down its huge, serpentine body like a waterfall. Kyouya scrambles to his feet but it's too late and the gush of coins hits him, burying him under until he doesn't know which way is up.

He wheezes, the gold too heavy for him to move much and the riches packed densely enough that he'll run out of air if he stays under. He wriggles and squirms in a hopefully upwards direction and takes a large breath when his head pops out of the million dollar sea.

The dragon is splayed out over the coins with its eyes shut again, not even ten meters from Kyouya. Its long body is mostly neck and tail while its wings are stretched out for what seems to be kilometres of scales. It's a beautiful blond colour with the scales becoming a lighter tan at its belly while the end of its tail and wings is a deep gold.

The spikes running along its spine are a shiny black and look wickedly sharp, as does the half curled horns at either side of its head. The talons are hidden under the riches but Kyouya logically presumes them to be incredibly dangerous looking as well.

Kyouya hauls himself out of the gold completely and walks over to the dragon, rather amused at the glinting of gold stuck in its scales.

When Kyouya stops beside its jaw, it opens one eye, the slitted pupil locking onto Kyouya's form. Its next breath is a hiss of steam that billows out, carrying the threat of scorching flame as it covers the dragon's head and thus Kyouya.

The human hears gold clinking together in a sudden rush as the dragon moves, the terrain underneath Kyouya becoming unstable again and he staggers backwards. Something catches his eyes and he looks upwards just in time to see a taloned paw above him. It slams down onto Kyouya, covering the teenager completely.

The dragon stills and closes it eye again.

There's a pause and just when the dragon thinks it actually killed the tiny human by accident, a muffled complaint comes from its paw. The dragon lets out another breath, this time clearly amused.

It would be fine with a human taking its gold since the riches aren't even its hoard, just the result of boredom, but the human seems to be insistent on bothering the dragon. It'll just throw the human out of the dead volcano later, when it's less lazy.

Both eyes snap open when something pierces through its scales.