Note: all italics signify a character speaking Dovah (dragon language) because I don't want to spend hours on the wiki.
I jerked my head up and attempted to cloak, but instead of fully cloaking I simply flickered in and out of invisibility as I backpedaled away from the cave, almost falling over. A perfectly camouflaged form emerged from the shadows in front of me, blocking any view of the inside of the cave. It stood at what I guessed was about ten feet tall and cradled a long-barreled sniper rifle in it's arms.
An army green hood obscured their features, while matching military fatigues and black ammo pouches covered the rest of his body. His back was covered with a desert camo ghillie suit with a partially skeletonized wing jutted out the side.
"Relax kid," He said in a gravelly voice. "If I wanted to kill you, you would have been dead three miles ago."
My eyes widened for a moment as I realized that he was telling the truth.
And that those two statements were polar opposites.
"Then why didn't you?" I asked, tilting my head, my helmet following suit. He stepped forward and pulled down his hood and revealed a rugged face. He had sharp brown eyes that complemented his thin, if a bit scruffy, features and pale scars that raked across his face. His scales were army green, while his underbelly was lime green. A dark brown, almost black, spine travelled from the tip of his snout to his tail.
"I don't kill other dovah unless they try to kill me." He said, a smile playing across his face for a moment before getting serious again.
"And you're lucky enough to catch me sober." He slung the rifle over his back, then motioned for me to follow. "Come on in." He turned around, then walked inside with me stumbling after him. Really, what else was I supposed to do?
I stepped over the blunt, tooth-like spikes that ran along the top and bottom of the mouth of the cave. I stepped onto a metal grate floor. The entire cave was covered with a brown mesh, covering the steel floor, walls, and ceiling, while empty beer bottles covered every surface not in use. In one corner there was a weapon station with a weapons bench, a weapons rack, and other things for maintenance of guns. Off in another corner there was a bed with a tomahawk and shotgun leaning against it. Dim lights hung from the ceiling, bathing the area in soft yellow light. I folded my helmet down, even if I still wasn't sure about this guy, even with his nice setup, he still had be an alcoholic of sorts if he had this many bottles lying around... unless they were all really old and he had just been here a really long time. Which was also possible, given his size and apparent age.
"Welcome to my humble abode," He said spreading his arms. "Foods over there --" He gestured towards a grimy brown fridge that probably used to be white. "And I'm Ovronaan, or Ov. How about you?"
"Loki... call me Drake, though." I looked down to see why GLaDOS wasn't speaking, because she would have usually said something by now.
Her light was out, probably meaning that she had either turned herself off to conserve power, or we had just run out of power.
The latter was most likely.
"Dammit" I muttered.
"Huh?" He turned around,
"Oh, nothing, I just ran out of power."
"Ran out of power?" He asked concernedly. "How low are you?" He asked, setting his rifle down on the bench and shedding his ghillie suit to reveal a set of armor that his other apparel covered that included a set of heavy black armor plating with gold edging, armor that only elite soldiers of the Dov Military wore. Ov was likely some high ranking field officer or something to have armor like that.
"Uh... empty?" I guessed. he opened the fridge, then grabbed a lemon before shutting it and throwing it to me.
"Eat up. I've got some questions I need to ask." I bit into the acidic fruit gratefully. Ovronaan sat on his bed and attached a chestplate onto his armor, matching the black and gold coloring.
After eating the lemon, I stood there for a little bit. "...So?"
"Huh?"
"What did you need to ask me?"
He fumbled with his words for a second. "Uh... first, what's your name?"
"Call me Drake."
"Is that your real name?"
"...No."
He shook his head ruefully. "Whatever... Where'd you get your gear?"
"Half of it's custom, half of it is... scavenged."
"And my final question; Were you, at any point in time and space, in a human form?"
I stared at him in shock. "W-what?"
He sighed. "Were you ever a human in the human world?" He repeated.
I continued to stare at him. "H-how do you-"
"Do you remember being here before being human?" He interrupted.
"...No." I answered, fearing that I may have gotten it wrong.
He took a deep breath then released it slowly. "Either they got something wrong with you... or you were in an egg before the project." My eye twitched.
"So, what you're saying is that I was always a dragon, even before I was human? How does that even work?"
"To answer your first question, that's exactly what I'm saying. And to answer your second... I honestly have no fucking clue how that works. How 'bout you go ask your mom?" He punched a non-descript part of the wall as he said this, causing a hairline crack to form in the wall and widen, becoming a thick door leading that opened to a chrome room that looked suspiciously like an airlock. Behind me, the opening to the cave was closing as a triple seal door with wide teeth on the top and bottom closed.
"M-my mom?"
"Yeah... your REAL mom."