Four Dragon Brothers

by Princess OtakuGeek

At the Convention

To start a story, one must always start at the beginning and our adventures began at a convention. We had all come in costume and like any other Displaced, we ended up becoming our costumes after purchasing an item from the Merchant. But I'm getting ahead of myself, first I should share a little bit about ourselves. The first thing that anyone would notice about us is that we had very different personalities, yet we still managed to mesh with each other.

Most would wonder how this was possible, but for us, it didn't matter. Despite our differences, we were all friends to the point where we were brothers. Besides, there was one thing that we did share. We were all foster kids. First there was Jack. Jack was the youngest of our group and the most cheerful, always picking up our spirits and helping. It honestly surprised me that he was so positive considering his life. Jack's mom had him by accident and when she gave birth to him, she immediately gave him up for adoption. This was a fact that he knew, yet despite that he still remained cheerful and helpful.

Tony is the oldest of us all and has always been the big brother of our group. He could definitely cook better than I could (Jack was a close second) and was definitely street smart. He was also a shameless flirt, though never to the point where he would bed a woman. Tony has this code and the number one rule is to respect a woman and treat her as a human being, not an object of conquest. I don't know much about his past, mostly because he refused to talk about it. His reason being that that wasn't his life anymore, this was. All I do know is that he was a runaway from a bad situation and I chose to leave it at that.

Then there was Sam. Sam, who's a couple years younger than me, is much shyer and more quiet than any of us. He's not much of a people person and feels more comfortable when he's either with us or an animal. While he's shy, he's also incredibly kind. Sort of like Fluttershy with the chattiness of Big Mac. It wasn't until later that I found out about his situation. Sam's parents had been abusive both physically and mentally. He'd already been a bit of a introverted person and having the parents he had didn't help matters. Fortunately someone in his neighborhood noticed and contacted child services who couldn't get him out of there fast enough.

Finally, there's me, Ben. Thinking on my friend's lives, I find that I have been truely blessed. I was born to loving parents who cared for me. I just didn't have them for long. My mom died in a car crash and my father lost the battle with cancer. After that, my grandmother took me in and raised me until the day came when she couldn't take care of me anymore. So my granny went to a nursing home and I was put in the system (we stayed in touch until her eventual death when I was older). And it was in the system that I met my three closest friends. We never got adopted, but that didn't matter to us. We had each other.

Another trait we shared, our love of anime and manga. While our tastes differed, there were some manga that we all enjoyed. Akatsuki no Yona or Yona of the Dawn was one of these stories. We first found it through the anime and we were hooked. There was just something engaging about the story, the environment and the characters! Oh sweet heavens the characters! Especially the dragon warriors! We all saw so much of ourselves in these four characters that it was almost creepy. So when the next anime con rolled around, it was a bit of a no brainer who we were dressing as. And as I said, that was were our adventure started.

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"Guys guys guys! Come check this out!" Jack shouted as he bounced over towards our table. Tony had just come back with lunch and as while he was gone, Jack had gone ahead to the vendors hall while we were waiting. As Tony passed around Subway sandwiches, Jack bounced into his seat and presented his prize with a grin.

In his hands was the dragon crest like in the anime and manga. And judging by the sound it made when he set it on the table, it was made of real metal. I picked it up to examine it and was even more impressed by the detail of the craftsmanship. Despite all the work and detail that Jack put into his costume, his dragon crest was made of shiny gold card stock with plastic beads.

"Where did you get this?" I finally asked as I passed it on to Tony.

"A table in the vendors hall." Jack answered. "There was this guy selling these pretty sweet costume props. Kinda creepy, but that may just be his costume. He was dressed as the Merchant from Resident Evil."

"Interesting." Tony said as he turned the crest over in his hand. "This is pretty good purchase, must've cost a lot."

Jack however shook his head. "Not really, the guy gave me a good deal for it since I had a great costume to match. In fact, I saw some pieces that you guys would like too. C'mon!"

"Hold your horses Jack, it's lunchtime and we just sat down to eat." Tony stopped our energetic friend before he could run off. He then tossed Jack his sandwich and crest which the younger boy caught. "Settle down and eat your sub first then we'll go check out this booth. It's not like it's going anywhere anyways."

Jack pouted for a moment then nodded and settled back down in his to eat. After we'd eaten our fill and cleaned up after ourselves, we followed Jack to the table in question. As we approached, the vendor welcomed us in a way that made me think that maybe the guy was getting a little too in character.

"Welcome back young costumer." He spoke in a deep raspy voice. "And I assume these are your friends that you told me about."

"Yep!" Jack said cheerfully. "These are my friends, Ben, Tony and Sam. Guys, this is the Merchant."

Tony's eyebrow raised. "The Merchant? Is that what you're calling yourself?" He asked. I couldn't see it, but I swear that guy was smirking.

"Something like that, yes." He said smoothly. "I like to think of myself as The Merchant."

In hindsight, that should've raised a few flags but at the time we just shrugged it off as a fan in character and began perusing his goods. There were lots of cool things here, really well detailed and looking real. I ended up settling on a rubber dragon claw glove that fit perfectly. I'd just painted my hand to look like the dragon claw, but this was better. Sam found a stuffed toy of Ao and a better fur\mask set than the one he had. Tony found some clip on earings and a set of daggers that looked like Jea-ha's. I was surprised a the price but we didn't question our good fortune and set down the money for our merch.

We walked away satisfied with our purchases and went on with our day none the wiser. We browsed around the vendors hall some more and bought some more things. Towards the end of the day however, that's when things changed. We had decided to call it a day and were leaving the convention center to head to our cars when a sudden burning sensation in my right hand stopped me in my tracks. And judging by the exclamations I heard around me, I wasn't the only one.

When I bit back the pain and looked up, I saw that Tony was crouched down and clutching his right leg. Sam had also fallen to his knees and had his hands to his face. Then as I looked over our group, I saw that someone was missing.

"Jack?!" I cried out in alarm as I looked around but there was no sign of our cheerful friend. Before we could start looking however, a wave of vertigo crashed onto us and my vision began to darken as I felt the ground drop from beneath me. The last thing I saw before I blacked out completely were my friends and an errant thought passed through my mind.

'Since when is Tony's hair green?'

Comments

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

You've gotten me hooked mate! Have a fave on me!

[Shadow Hero]

Seems interesting. Well diffently track this story.

[Changeling_Shadows]

This seems pretty cool so far! Im curious to see where it goes

[ironwar]

Now they are the only ones who can stop the dragon god alduin, FOR THEY ARE DOVA- what, wrong story line. Oh...... forget I said anything.

[Flame Heart]

Hmmm.........