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The Dragon in the Woods

Summary:

Shouto was just minding his own business, taking a calming stroll to relax and clear in mind.

To say the least, it was not relaxing, and his mind was not cleared.

Notes:

My almost-late-in-every-timezone day three!
The magick Shouto uses works in a similar fashion to how alchemy works in Fullmetal Alchemist.
Prompt used : do you trust me?

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Seeing a dragon wasn't the most peculiar thing in the world. The (usually) gentle beings roamed the Earth freely wherever and whenever they want, unbothered by human society. There were the odd dragons bred and raised in captivity for war purposes or wild ones that were tamed. It wasn't common but doing either slowly was becoming more and more popular. The latter was the least common of the two; adult dragons were aggressive creatures when a human approached them, taming is a practice not without danger.

Shouto was wandering the forest to get his mind off things, not caring much to pay attention to his surroundings—which led to him running into multiple trees. The sun was bright, a near cloudless sky, perfect for the summer solstice. Shouto stared up at the beautiful blue sky, eyes catching on the odd cloud that drifted by. With his eyes elsewhere, he didn't notice the bump in his path until he tripped over it and faceplanted gracelessly. Pushing the tail-end of his cloak that flew over his head upon impact, he sat on feet, peering behind him to see what made him fall. He expected a tree root, but what his eyes met was something totally unexpected.

It was golden and 100% not a root. Shouto's eyes widened as he trailed his eyes to the side. All that was going through his mind was "holy crap it's a dragon I tripped on a dragon's tail this thing is gonna kill me."

Lo and behold, it was, in fact, a dragon's tail. To Shouto's luck, the beast was asleep, allowing him to breathe a little easier. He had enough time to get away. But—Shouto's legs were moving against his brain when he stood, bringing him around to get a better look at the beast. To say the least, the air was knocked out of his already-working-overtime lungs.

The dragon's body was in horrible shape, to say the least. The amount of blood present on just the side of the body Shouto was enough to make him feel sick. It was all newly drawn blood as well, there were bits and pieces that were dried but the rest was still wet. But what did knock him on his ass, was looking at the dragon's head to see it's one visible darker gold eye was wide open and staring at him with weakened intensity.

"What happened to you..." Shouto mumbled taking a step closer. The dragon let out what was probably meant to be a growl but came out more like a pained moan.

"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you." He said with the surest tone he could muster, placing a hand on one of the few bloodless patches. Shouto thought hard for a moment, going through everything he remembered about caring for wounded animals—sure dragons were huge compared to the animals he read about, but it was the best he had. "I may be able to help," he announced finally. "Do you trust me?" He met his eyes to the dragon's. It just huffed, moving the grass around its nostrils.

Shouto closed his eyes, materializing what he needed, changing the grass into a metal bucket and a sponge, leaving grassless dirt patches. Now paying attention to the area, he was familiar with where he was. There was a stream nearby that he could fill the bucket with.

"I'll be one moment." He lifted the bucket and jogged to the stream, returning a minute later. Shouto began wetting the sponge and cleaning the blood bit by bit, having to return to his water source multiple times to change out the bloodied for clean. At least a few hours passed before all the blood was done away with. With no prior knowledge of a dragon's healing factors, he was astonished by the fact that the wounds weren't still bleeding. Nonetheless, Shouto was a tiny bit pleased with his work, especially about how he flipped the beast so his other side was exposed and managed to raise its wings to get under them.

"There. You're all cleaned. I can stitch up the wounds, but your healing looks like it wouldn't need such thing. I don't know, should I still do that?" Shouto looked back over to the dragon's head. Despite the fact that it was still in obvious pain and looked extremely tired, it still appeared to give the human a "did you actually just ask that?" look. In a similar fashion to before Shouto cleaned the wounds, the dragon huffed, which Shouto decided meant yes.

Nodding more to himself than the beast, he changed more grass into a needle and suturing wire. And he got to work again.

The sun was under the trees when he was finished, the only thing saying the sun was still above the horizon was the picturesque multi-coloured sky. At that point, Shouto was too tired to make the trek back home and kind of, fell asleep leaning on the dragon's underbelly.


 

The sun hitting Shouto's eyelids woke him up the next morning. He dragged his eyes open halfway before they snapped open, his body jerking forward into a sitting position. The memory of him falling asleep next to the golden beast bounced around his skull, immediately putting him on edge. He glanced around, only to find no trace of a dragon. All he found was someone leaning against a tree a ways away from where Shouto was. Maybe the crazy healing dragons seemed to possess was fast enough to close even ones as gruesome as the ones he bore witness to the previous day.

Still looking around for the several-metre-long beast, Shouto stood up and straightened out his clothes. The sound must've alerted the seemingly sleeping person, who was upright in seconds.

"Hey! I was wondering when you'd wake up. It's almost mid-day, you know." The person was awfully energetic for it still technically being the morning.

Shouto took a step forwards, squinting to get a better look at the person. His eye was caught on the golden colour that lined the sides of their body. "Who are you?"

"Oh! I'm Denki Kaminari. You?"

"Todoroki Shouto."

"Isn't Todoroki the name of the famous family magick users that I hear about literally everywhere I go?" the person sounded excited, taking a few steps towards Shouto.

Shouto simply nodded.

His eyes widened when the person got close enough to Shouto that he could make out all their features. And the gold was *dragon wings and tail*.

"Holy crap..."

"Thanks for the help yesterday by the way! I probably would've died if you hadn't been there," they said, looking down at their arms that had a few bright red scars on each. "The stitches came out when I shifted though. That kinda sucked for me. But a little sleep and the cuts were scars! Wild how healing works."

"You're... the dragon. From last night?" Shouto was awestruck. Dragons could shapeshift into humans. This truly was an eventful and insightful his walk around the forest was.

"I am!" Denki smiled brightly, sharpened teeth on display; he opened his wings as if Shouto couldn't already see them.

"Oh! Another thing. As thanks for saving my life, I would like to be able to return the favour. In doing so I'll stay by your side until I can make up for what you did for me. If you'll trust me to do so, of course."

Shouto was a little stunned by how serious and proper Denki got.

"Yeah... That sounds great."

Denki smiled wider somehow, regaining his careless demeanour. "Awesome!" His wings flapped once, lifting his body off the ground for a second. "Something tells me our time together will be really eventual."

Notes:

I decided to change the theme of today's one-shot drastically. Originally, Denki was supposed to be caught by villains and Shouto has to rescue him but I didn't wanna write that. Maybe someday, but not today.

I wrote this in one sitting cause I was like "oh crap I need to get something up for day 3"

But yeah hope you enjoyed the one story that probably follows the prompt in the loosest way possible.

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