Cassandra, having worked out her anger on the forest and even melting the rails of the track on her way back to Conjur, stared at the pair. Stanton looked terrible. His outfit had scuffs and marks all over it, and his hair was messy.

The woman with him looked like she was dressed for dealing with messes, though. Leather pants with a sword and wands, a shirt that in Cassandra's opinion showed too much of her chest, and some light leather pads on her forearms, probably used for fighting. What the woman looked like, though, was low-born.

There were a few things Cassandra could do about it. She could, at one end of the scale, drop her old form, become a dragon, and turn the city to ash and glass like she had the forest; stomp over there and demand why the woman had kissed Stanton; ignore it and fume quietly; or, finally, she could go and find some annoying rich aristocrat to beat the crap out of.

Of her options, Cassandra ruled out the first—as much as she disliked the nobles who lived in Conjur, she didn't want to kill all the commoners. The second had her pause to take stock of it. She'd had a fight with Stanton and then run. Were they even dating in the first place, let alone now? Grumbling to herself, she realized she was already doing the third thing—and it didn't help. That settled, she turned around and walked away from the pair, the image of them kissing still in her mind.

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Both Stanton and Lorissa turned their heads at the same time and their wands appeared in their hands. Feeling the presence of the dragon, and close enough that they'd be able to see it if there weren't buildings, they started to move.

Stanton pointed at an alleyway and started running for it. "Over here. We can change out of sight."

"Why?" Following him nonetheless, Lorissa ducked into the same alleyway as Stanton and raised her wand at the same time.

"Repeat this," Swiftpaw said. "By the shining light of goodness, and with the power of virtue. By the purity of my feminine charms, I call on my wand of power to protect the world!"

Lorissa repeated the words, trying her best not to giggle at hearing Stanton say them too. Only when they finished did the magic take hold of her and—in a blaze of blinding pink light—turn her into that fluffy, tightly suited feline girl that Stanton had first inflicted on her.

With the change done, though, the earlier powers of deduction, testing of motive, and speed enhanced exponentially. She could almost feel the intent of everyone within a block radius, or so she figured, so she ran up the wall to see where the dragon was.

Watching as Lorissa ran up a vertical wall using claws she'd apparently sprouted, Stanton instead crouched and jumped—landing beside her as she reached the top. "Hey, this was a good idea. Look, it's over that way!"

Much as Lorissa could have rushed ahead of Stanton, she kept to his pace as they ran across the rooftops. The gap where the street below cut between the buildings worried her at first, but when Stanton took a running jump, she followed.

Stanton wanted to howl. He hadn't really cut loose and howled since he was ten, but having someone equally skilled as himself brought it out in him. He opened his mouth and paused—spotting the dragon. "Well, I don't think we'll have trouble convincing the city watch that there is a dragon in the city."

Watching the beast tossing armored guards around like they were toys, Lorissa had a brief moment of absolute panic that she was going to go fight that thing. "This is nuts!"

"Your wand is more than a wand." Swiftpaw Deathbringer dropped from Lorissa's neck and then, as she held up her wand to look at it, he jumped up and landed on the tip of it.

A flash of bright light beside him stole Stanton's attention. He saw her wand was glowing brighter than the sun, and from the end grew a blade of midnight black steel that—when it was done growing—quenched the light. "Alright, that was awesome."

"That's Swiftpaw! Are you—Oh, he says he's okay. He is my sword! How cool is that?! Nya!" Her vocal tic went completely unnoticed. "Alright, nya, let's do this!"

Aiming himself, Stanton started running for the edge of the last building before the big plaza where the dragon was fighting. Not for the first time was he amazed at how far he could jump as he leapt into the air. But even as he sailed through the air, he knew he wouldn't quite reach the dragon.

Landing in a crouch beside Stanton, Lorissa felt the urge to strike a pose with her hip out to one side and her sword held straight up beside her. A glance at Stanton showed him landed in a crouch, one fist planted on the flagstones.

"You don't get to come into our town and stir up trouble, dragon!" Stanton straightened up and gestured to the monster. "Why don't you try taking on someone your own—"

A pompous werewolf was all Cassandra really wanted. She smiled serenely as she rushed toward Stanton, cutting him off mid monologue with a swipe of her claw. "Would you shut up and just die?!"

Falling to the training he'd done, Stanton felt reality itself warning him as Cassandra slashed at him again and again. His moves felt sluggish compared to hers, but his precognition gave him the edge. "You know, you would be way better at doing that if you could, you know, hit me."

"Stand still you annoying, noble, werewolf bas—" It was Cassandra's turn to be cut off. A white-hot slash of pain down her back caught her off-guard and made her spin around to face the new threat. "A were… cat?"

"Nya! That's right! And I'm here to teach you not to play with your food!" When Cassandra reached out to grab her, Lorissa brought her sword around and slapped the limb away. "You need to be faster than that to catch a kitty, nya!" That silly word spurred her on, driving more energy and speed into her limbs so that when Cassandra launched into a flurry of swings, Swiftpaw Deathbringer was there to slap and knock them away every time.

The worst part, as far as Cassandra was concerned, was that Lorissa looked happy. This wasn't a hard fight for her, nothing was hard for her. She parried every single strike Cassandra tried—and looked like she was having the time of her life. Cassandra even noticed the werecat's tail flicking side to side. It hit Cassandra full force that Lorissa was enjoying the fight more than she was.

The furious intent around the dragon changed, leading Lorissa to back off a step—only to jump back even further when a lightning bolt hit her. Her fur crackled and stood on end, and Lorissa felt all the muscles in her body dance and fight her commands. No sooner did the lightning end than she felt her whole body go limp and she slumped sideways and down to the stone.

With Cassandra ignoring him, and seemingly ready to finish off Lorissa, Stanton rushed forward and got a flurry of punches into the small of her back before she could turn and swipe at him. "Why don't you try that on me?"

"Don't mind if I do." Building up her magic for another strike, Cassandra put even more energy into her lightning spell before calling a series of thunderbolts from the sky above. Only, when the magically-stimulated clouds delivered their deadly cargo of electricity, it hit her instead of Stanton.

It burned her. Normally a dragon's scales would be impervious to simple elemental attacks, but thanks to the extra energy Cassandra had put into the spell, it scorched angry red patterns all over her shoulders and back.

"Really now, using magic against a mage? Are you that young a hatchling that you don't know the first thing about your own element?" Stanton moved fast, dodging around a weak slash to punch Cassandra in the ribs with a fast one-two. When she wobbled a little and bent double, he brought a fist up in a heavily telegraphed uppercut—but never connected.

Already done with stupid werewolves and stupider werecats, Cassandra jumped up and away from Stanton's punch and—with a strong flap of her wings—took to the air and struggled to fly. What was worse, she could feel the rush of magic behind her from Stanton preparing spells to pull her back down to the ground, and had to banish them before they could grab her.

Cursing, Stanton glared at the dragon that casually dispelled his magic. "It's getting way too good with magic." Putting together one last spell, he slipped an extra special addendum to it and cast it into the sky. Either the dragon didn't recognize the complex tracking element of the spell or it was too slow in stopping it, because when it shut down the Boggy Mess main spell, it didn't see the Show Me Where that now bound itself to the monster. "Yes!"

"Why 'yes', nya? It got away!" Despite herself, Lorissa was pretty surprised to see how good at magic Stanton was. Redirecting magic was no simple matter, and yet he'd done so using the dragon's own magic on itself.

"Look, it was dispelling everything I threw at it. Either that dragon is learning fast or—" His mind racing, Stanton tried to put together the facts with his best guess for what a dragon could do. "Or it has learned enough shapechanging to be able to sneak into the school!"

Lorissa giggled. "You look like your fur was dyed white. What's so bad about that? Uh, nya." The little rush of power that accompanied her use of the word was addictive enough that she forewent any embarrassment over the sound.

"Don't you see? If the dragon has learned magic at the school, it must have killed one of the other students and is impersonating them. It's the only possibility!" Stanton turned his head as he noticed someone approaching them. "Sergeant Gaoler!"

"Thank you for the assist. I wasn't sure if any of us was going to make it out of that fight with the—the, uh…" He hated to admit it, but there was only one word that described the thing that had attacked. "The monster." But, he wasn't risking his job by saying it out loud. "Are you, uh, together?"

"Nya! We sure are!" Lorissa reached out and pulled Stanton against her, purring softly as she looked seductively at his profile.

"Careful of the sword, uh, Kat." Reaching out his paw, Stanton gently pushed Lorissa's blade (that he had to remind himself was Swiftpaw) away from where it threatened to cut his dress from neck to hip. Looking at the officer, he said, "Yeah. When I realized that damn dragon was going to be a bit too much for me, I called in Kat here."

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"I see." Sergeant Gaoler didn't see exactly. He wasn't stupid enough to turn down capable assistance, though. "I saw you casting at it. Learn some tricks from your cousin?"

"A few. Ugh, Stanton is such a nerd, though. When I asked him to teach me magic, he gave me a dozen books and told me to start at the first one. Well, I took some of his books and learned those neat spells that should have been able to gum up its wings, but looks like that was a bust."

"It's a shame you don't know any tracking spe—" Lorissa was distracted from her snark by a kiss on the lips. For a moment her eyes widened at the up-close look of Stanton's, but then she smiled into his lips and tried to hug herself to him—only for him to let go before she could properly grapple.

Blinking in surprise, the sergeant finally realized what had happened. "Oh. Did this interrupt a date? I'm sorry if things didn't go as planned, but again, thank you for the assistance." Turning, using his back to hide the little smirk he wore, Sergeant Gaoler marched back over to where his guards were recovering from fighting a dragon monster.

"Well, at least we now have an excuse to kiss when we look like this, nya." Lorissa ignored Stanton's look of shock and grabbed his hand. "Come on. We need to get our tails out of public areas and back to our usual selves." She paused, feeling a little unbalanced. "Oh! Nya!"

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Landing on the roof of her dormitory, Cassandra snarled at the pain—mostly to her pride. She was in the process of building up her normal self to change to when she felt a prickle of her magic senses.

Casting a detection spell, she found the culprit. "A tracking spell? When did that fuzzy little witch cast that?!" Preparing to blast it away, she froze in dawning realization. "If it's an active tracking spell, and it feels active, they will know I dispelled it here."

Looking down, Cassandra shivered at how close she'd come to telling her enemies exactly where she lived. Calmly, she spread her wings and took to the sky again. Flying, she had learned, was fun. She could soar and glide and dive and simply enjoy being airborne. "I'll leave the city an—ACK!" The urge to monologue had been stronger than her memory of the last time she'd flown (returning from the forest) where she'd discovered what bugs taste like to a draconic palate.

When she was out over the farmland surrounding Conjur, she flew as high as she could and then finally cleansed herself of the annoying spell that had been tattling on her location. During the flight back home, she held the memory of one very surprised (and foul tasting) dragonfly foremost in her memory—and didn't open her mouth.

How the kobolds had built a secret tunnel to the roof of her dorm building, Cassandra would never know. Opening the clever lock, she peeled back the door disguised as a large roof tile, slipped inside, and closed it above her again.

"They even made it large enough for me to fit down like this."

It warmed her heart to know her minions thought so much of her. Passing her bedroom exit, she took the ladder all the way down to the tunnels under the city. Filled with power and trying to salve her hurt ego at the defeat, she entered her throne room to find dozens of kobold faces peeking out of side tunnels before they raced to flank her path.

Reaching out her hands to each side, Cassandra petted the bowed heads of the kobolds as she passed them. Inhaling their worship as if it were the finest smoke in the world, she approached the dais and stepped up to take her seat.

A throne was more than simply somewhere to part one's tail. Cassandra knew now the power of sitting on a throne and still being able to see above every other head in the room. She looked toward her minions and asked, softly, "How fares the digging?"

"Digging?!"

The angry voice drew not only Cassandra's attention, but that of all the kobolds present. As one they all rose to their feet and a muted cacophony of blades pulling free of leather sheaths could be heard.

"Stop!" Cassandra stood, glaring at the newcomer. "Let him come forward. This is the Evil Pig of Evil. He created me."

The anger of the kobolds turned to worship, the one thing the Evil Pig of Evil could accept to spare their lives for their earlier moment of aggression. "Why are you digging when you only need to beat up one little girl to take over the world?"

Cassandra slumped back on her throne. "Two! There are two now. Ugh, and the new one is even more annoying. A werecat that uses a sword. I didn't even know werecats existed! And the werewolf knows magic, too."

Walking up the steps of the dais, the Evil Pig of Evil glared up at Cassandra on her throne. "And why do you still languish in this form? You could be anything you want, and you stay like this?"

The accusation took Cassandra aback. She blinked down at her porcine master in surprise. "I could—?" She shook her head. The power bleeding off the Evil Pig of Evil was more than even than she herself possessed. "Teach me, master."

The Evil Pig of Evil was content with the supplication shown by its creation and her followers. "You are yet young and will grow into your full power with time, but for short periods you can focus yourself and be far more right now, and you do it like this…"

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"You were amazing!" Lorissa hugged Swiftpaw Deathbringer to her chest and squeezed him until he faulted and let out a stray purr. "I need to practice, nya. I'm too used to a light, one-handed blade."

"I am a katana. You are meant to hold me with both hands and slash, not stab." Deigning to purr more, Swiftpaw pressed his midnight black cheek to Lorissa's neck. "But with my guidance you will cut the very air before you."

Stanton was trying to ignore the praise Lorissa was heaping onto Swiftpaw in his quest to work out what the path of the dragon meant. "It flew over the city to here, paused, then turned at a sharp angle and flew out into the surrounding farms."

"So we search out there?" Angel asked, sitting on Stanton's shoulder while he studied the map on the table.

"No. That it dispelled the tracker out there indicates it knew it was being tracked. It was a ploy to throw us off its track. No, it learned to do magic at the school—I just know it. The forms of those dispells were the same as the academe teaches, but were a little sloppy. I bet this spot, or somewhere around it, is where the dragon realized it was being tracked." Plopping his paw down on the table, Stanton pressed one claw to the point where the red line changed direction. "So, that means this line"—deftly using a ruler and pencil, he enchanted it to make a green line with barely a hint of his magic potential, and extended the original path out across the city—"indicates its original heading."

"So we search there?" Getting a bit bored of the game, Angel floated over to where Stanton's wand sat on the table. It was in its fully activated form because he was still fuzzy, bedressed, and covered in sparkles. "Why didn't you change back?"

"Because I'm trying to get used to how much magic potential I have," Stanton said. "And no, we don't search. We give all this to the nice sergeant as thanks for not locking us up and asking more questions than any of us want to answer."

Lorissa laughed. "Nya! That's so weird to do. As an adventurer, I tended to keep out of the law's way and let them go about their business. I didn't deal with any when I was a brigand, but I was fairly happy not to see them then, either. And, now, we're going to go and play nice, nya."

"There's probably a few hundred individual homes along that line, Kat, and neither of us—"

"The Amazing, nya." When Stanton lifted his head and stared at her, Lorissa was grinning enough to show a little of her fangs. "The Amazing Kat."

"I'm not calling you all that. What if we're in a fight? I need something short I can shout out," Stanton said.

Purring, Lorissa beamed at Stanton. "Okay, Lulu."

"See! Isn't that easier to say than Super Lupine Girl?" Stanton tried his best to ignore the look of surprise on Lorissa's face. "If things get tight, we need to communicate fast. That means short names. You can call me Lulu, but I'll call you Kat."

"Purrrrrfect."

It was quickly becoming apparent to Stanton that no matter what he said, Lorissa would always find a way to make it suit her own ends.

"Now that we have that settled," Angel said, zooming in a circle in the middle of the room, "let's have a slumber party to celebrate!"

Stanton said, "Oh no."

Lorissa asked, "What's that?"

"Well, we all get cozy in our pajamas and talk about boys and do our hair and—Why are you both looking at me like I rolled in something nice?" Angel's eyes narrowed.

"Because I don't like boys," Stanton and Lorissa said together, though Lorissa added a "nya" on the end, for obvious reasons.

"Me either," Swiftpaw said, though he skipped the cutesy nya.

"Well… Well, you're all stupid! Boys are mostly kinda yucky, but they're also really nice sometimes. They help you if you get in a jam, and even take the fall for you if you get up to any wild hijinks." Angel looked between the three, though on her second pass of giving hopeful, puppy eyes—she skipped Swiftpaw.

When her efforts to find boy-appreciation among her companions failed, Angel flopped on the nearby table and slumped to her back. "You're all terrible."

"But we should have a party," Lorissa said, "because we won! The dragon threw everything she had at us, but we stopped her! Nya!"

Stanton felt buoyed by the notion. It was true, no one had been seriously hurt despite the dragon getting worked up. "Yeah that—Wait. 'She'?"

Purring, Lorissa reached out and prodded Stanton on the nose with her toebean before he even knew it was coming. "Yes, she. Or didn't you notice? And here you were so recently admitting you prefer girls. Girls like me."

"I didn't really put it together." Waving his hand, Stanton gestured at himself vaguely. "Angel appeared and did this to me. What if another familiar turned some other guy into the dragon?"

"Then he's hot, nya." Lorissa flounced onto the couch and squirmed on her back. "She'd look better in a dress, though." She didn't care if her tail was flicking around like a possessed snake or that the outfit clinging to her was probably doing almost obscene things to some of her curves, Lorissa tilted her head and looked at Stanton. "Nya, you're not jealous, I hope?"

"Jealous of you? Nah. I'm sure my dragon girlfriend will always come back to me." As he said it, Stanton was surprised at how good it felt to flirt and joke with Lorissa. He'd only known her a short time, but they'd connected in a way that was literally magical. Also, she'd spent more time cuddled up to his chest than any other girl before her.

Letting out a surprised mrow at the statement, Lorissa giggled at how silly she'd been to think he was speaking from the heart. "Oh, sure. When's the wedding?" She was starting to get the hang of acting more feline. Silly cat noises they might be, but she buzzed with energy from them.

"Next week. Don't tell Mom, though, unless you want to see what the inside of a dragon looks like." Using a spell to duplicate the couch (but not the catgirl on it), Stanton flopped down as well and looked up at the ceiling with a sigh.

"Your mom's a werewolf, then?" Lorissa asked.

"Do you want to know her full name and titles?"

Now with Swiftpaw Deathbringer landing on her stomach, Lorissa started rubbing her familiar's ears. "Sure."

Purring, Swiftpaw folded sideways and flopped onto his back, twisting himself to ensure Lorissa could reach all the good spots. When her paw strayed to his tummy, though, he raised a back leg in warning. He was as tolerant as the next feline, but if she touched his belly more than twice, she was going to need a new arm.

Her danger sense spiking as she rubbed Swiftpaw's belly, Lorissa paused and looked at the way his mouth was opening—eyes rolling back like some kind of fuzzy shark. Carefully, she drew her paw back and changed to rubbing his ears.

"So, uh, Lady Clarissa Sharptooth-Raveel-Brightfang, knight errant and commander of the Shining Guard. If she came to town, and set herself against the dragon…" Stanton shrugged.

"Nope. She'd never win. It's how evil villains work. If anyone but the hero and her friends try to beat up the evil villain, the villain will survive and get strong enough to defeat that person." Angel flew over and hovered above Stanton, looking down into his eyes. "If your mom comes here, you have to stop them meeting up."

Looking up at her, Stanton was about to deeply question how such a thing would work—but then he remembered the insane amount of magic he could call to his hand now, the fact that a dragon actually existed, and his wand. "Okay. So that goes the same for the guards, right?"

"Nah. Guards are mooks. She wouldn't be able to kill them if she tried. The best she can ever do is knock them down. They might need a bandage or two, but they'll be up and fighting again before she even flies out of view." Floating down, Angel settled herself on Stanton's tummy the way Swiftpaw had Lorissa's. "Oh, and don't even joke about dating the dragon. It's going to happen at some point. You'll probably both not recognize the other, meet up, have coffee, and then discover later that the nice girl/guy you were with was your foe. Oh, and you'll definitely kiss."

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.