[Location: Adventure Zone] [open to any!]

[imperial_long]

Good afternoon, Taxon: there is an enormous black dragon flying in lazy circles above the city.

Specifically, above the Northern District, that nebulous area currently masquerading as Fantasyland. After all, what's a good castle adventure without a dragon? Even if the dragon is distinctly Eastern in flavor rather than Western.

On the map, the dragon displays as Oolong. In the air, Oolong loops like a black ribbon, drifting down from the sky in long, rippling undulations as he scans the woods below for interesting things.

'Interesting things' qualify as sheep. Or deer. Or, perhaps, even a goblin here or there.

Either way, he's visible from anywhere in Adventure Zone... and for that matter, probably visible from parts of the regular city too.



[OOC: Oolong in da house! Long is currently a 90-foot-long Chinese imperial dragon. He still has his tablet on him. Feel free to approach him in any way from terror to glee.]

Comments

[imperial_long]

"Exploded upon you? How terribly rude of him!" Oolong says, tching. The big head scans until Oolong sees that clear space-- it will do, if not ideal-- and there are some fairly impressive aerial gymnastics as Oolong manages to land with no more damage to the landscape than a few smaller branches broken off trees here and there, and enormous feet splayed in the stream.

"Why should he do such a thing as that?" Oolong asks, once settled.

[apackofone]

"Well..."

Remus wades close enough to not feel like he's shouting their conversation. "Madelyne and I went to find the evil wizard. We thought there was a danger of him marching minions into the rest of the city, as evil wizards are wont to do. So we went to stop him.

"And when we defeated him, he exploded. Like a good filled pinata. It was rather revolting. Reminded me of being back in school again."

[imperial_long]

Oolong rests his massive jaw upon his massive hands, staring down at Remus with the vast golden eyes slowly revolving.

"Intestines are no doubt less pleasant than candy," he observes. Although at the moment, in this body, intestines sound actually quite pleasant, but never mind that.

"...you were frequently exploded upon by necromancers in school? Goodness."

[apackofone]

Remus laughs and ducks under the water, surfacing again and scrubbing his hands through his hair. "No! But we had a poltergeist at the school, Peeves. He used to throw about goo and ectoplasm and randomly make things explode for fun."

[imperial_long]

Oolong's face is both easier and harder to read in this form than Long's is. It's, well, not remotely human, of course, so many of the tells of human expression-- eyebrows, crinkling skin at the corner of one's eyes-- do not apply; on the other hand there is something essentially less guarded in Oolong than there is in Mayland Long.

For now, the window-sized eyes open wider, almost comically so, and ninety feet away the dragon's tail twitches and snaps branches off a tree like toothpicks.

"How extraordinarily awful," Oolong says with deep feeling. Should a poltergeist ever explode goo upon him, why--! Well, he is not altogether certain what he would do against a poltergeist, but no matter. He would think of something.

[apackofone]

"Peeves was, well, Peeves. Poor Severus copped it a lot. The best way to deal with someone with like that is to laugh with them. If you don't react and get upset with them, they'll back off." He sighs sadly. "Severus never did get that."

He ducks under water and surfaces again, just enjoying the water, however damn cold it is. "May I ask a personal question?"

[imperial_long]

"Hmmm. I doubt I could have taken it in the sanguine necessary spirit," Oolong admits, raising one hand to skritch at belly scales.

He peers curiously down at the wet Remus Lupin. "Certainly you may. I reserve the right not to answer."

[apackofone]

"Of course!" He never considered otherwise.

"Are you in that shape often?"

[imperial_long]

The giant mouth broadens into a smile.

"Define 'often'," the dragon counters. "In the context of my entire life, yes, I have often been in this form. In the context of my time in Taxon, the answer, sadly, would be no."

Why ever answer something with a simple yes or no when you can equivocate and circumlocute instead?

[apackofone]

"Within the context of Taxon or a human lifetime," he clarifies. "Is there any reason you've not been?"

[imperial_long]

Oolong laughs, a deep rumbling laugh as if something about Remus's words has amused him very much. He twists about in the stream and on the stream's banks, like a cat rolling around on a carpet to get comfortable, or just to scratch its back. He grins at Remus, upside down.

"In the context of a human lifetime I have been in this form often. In the context of my human lifetime I have been in this form not nearly often enough."

The vast golden eyes gleam with humour. He is enjoying his riddles a little too much, but then, he rarely gets to have much fun of this sort, so perhaps we can't hold it overly against him.

[apackofone]

Remus moved himself up the shallows more to avoid being swamped by the surging water of a playful, ninety odd foot dragon.

"So, in the context of your human lifetime, is there is a reason you've not been in that form half as often as you'd like?"

[imperial_long]

The humour does fade a bit at that and Oolong's head twists about again to rest with jaw on the muddy stream-bank and golden eyes whirling slowly, fixed on Remus.

"There are reasons for everything, Remus Lupin. Undoubtedly I have acquired some karma and this is the universe's way of settings things to rights. Perhaps I am even enduring the consequence for karma I have yet to accumulate. The universal principles of cause-and-effect are not bound by linear time, after all."

The dragon puffs some warm blasts of air, eyes revolving in slow, aimless circles for a few seconds as it-- he-- it devotes Thought to this. After a bit, the massive shoulders shrug.

"But I think you are not asking quite so metaphysically. In which case, the answer is more simple: I have no power whatsoever over the form I inhabit. That I have occupied it at all in these last few years is some whimsy of our captors."

[apackofone]

"I am sorry."

Because, of everyone here, Remus understands being forced to assume a physical shape at the whim of something far out of your power and control.

[imperial_long]

Oolong shrugs again, gesturing lazily with one claw.

"It is something I must endure, apparently. As I said: it is my karma. There is no fighting that. And being attached to this body will only bring me pain."

Deep siiiiiigh.

[apackofone]

Deep sigh which Remus braces himself against, leaning into it and relaxing as it ends. "I looked into karmic beliefs once, after the war. I figured I must have done something truly atrocious preciously, or I had chosen a life towards enlightenment this time around."

[imperial_long]

Long nods sagely. "It is entirely possible. You do seem to exhibit the compassion required to progress upon the path of enlightenment, at least."

[apackofone]

"I've always found that suffering leads a being to do one of two things. To close down with anger and rage at the world and those they see as 'weak' like they must have been. Or to feel strongly with those suffering because they remember they what it was like."

He sits down, legs still in the water. "A lot of werewolves in my world become angry. There's only so much persecution a person can bear before they find themselves unable to take anymore. And in many ways, the oppression and sneering is worse than any outright abuse. Like you're to blame for not having the decency to die when you were attacked."

[imperial_long]

"I wouldn't know," Oolong says politely to the first statement, his enormous hands folded under his chin. He does not consider himself to have experienced a great deal of suffering in his existence. Oh, there have been certain moments, of course; but on the whole they've been islands in what even he must admit has been a fairly comfortable few thousand years.

He has more often observed the suffering of others. Although no werewolves, as best he can recall.

"Goodness. How irrational, and yet I suppose people have always projected their own fears onto other victims."

[apackofone]

"Most sentient beings are fairly irrational, I find." Thought is what drives them to it. "The terrifying thing about any werewolf is the realisation that before it was the monster you fear, it was a person. Like you. Any one of them could become one of us, the Other, just with a graze of a fanged mouth. Every werewolf was a victim before it became the predator, the monster."

It was too easy to see them and think of what nearly was, every full moon.

"A lot of werewolves do lash out. They leave society, go and form wild packs. But more stay and deal with the hand dealt them. Form their own subtle packs and learn to cope with the shift in their place in the world."

[imperial_long]

Oolong's vast, golden eyes gleam with interest and wry humour.

"And did you yourself have such a pack?" he cannot resist asking.