Finally the Arrival
Being on the plane with the girls was extremely exhausting for Ethan. At first they were all shy and quiet except for Aria she never left his lap and kept asking if he could marry her. Later, finding out the reason was because Ethan seemed really cute like a baby lizard. Also, what didn't help his case was that for some reason his appearance started to change and it is very slow. The skin had transparent dragon scales and did not go back to normal. Instead they stayed there and new white scales were growing under the transparant ones, though they were not very noticeable and his eyes changed from black to an icy grey with cat slits as his pupils.
The rest of the girls would not stop talking after a while, Gina was asking normal questions and wondering what his fighting techniques were, Nina was still stubborn about their loss and kept calling him a spirit beast, and Cordelia was being provocative as always.
Nearing the end Ethan was wondering on the four favors he won. "I guess I'll ask for them when I need them." Looking out the window he sees the clouds they are passing by and the endless ocean for 2 hours. Almost reaching their destination he spots land at the horizon and starts to see buildings.
As the flight crew was getting ready for landing Aria got off of Ethan's lap and asked "Do you need a ride to any where. Me and my Father can drive you."
"Don't worry I already have someone waiting for me." Her question warmed Ethan's heart since she was so sincere. She seems to be like a little girl but in truth all of them are his age 17 and have finished high school and going to Drake Cultivator University or DCU for short. They also mentioned that signing up for DCU is already passed and they were the best of the best for incoming freshmen.
The plane landed safely with no problems. They all departed and went to the lobby of the Miami Air Port. There was a lot of people and some were even cultivators. Not being used to it, Ethan was a little nervous and eventually the girls stopped walking and started to run which was strange. In a few seconds he noticed they all hugged these bulky men and there was one in the middle of them waving at Ethan. He looked like a middle age man in a special military uniform and had black hair, brown eyes, and the same height as Ethan. Ethan walks up to him and said hi to the other men as he walked by.
"Hello Ethan I am John Wayne. Just call me John or pops, its up to you. I'm your "adoptive father" more like your care taker for now. Any way I'm also Grandpa Miyamoto's disciple and will help you train."
"Alright pops nice to meet you. You know that I don't have any natures power right. I still do not know when I will awaken." Ethan responded with a wiry smile.
"No need to worry, trust me it will be tomorrow. And these men next to me are the young ladies fathers. Also, the Heads of the Dragon Clans and the region." John responded cheery.
"Hello I am Mr. Blaze, just call me Blaze. Tomorrow you will conduct your test at DCU and start classes in 3 months, but I could only pull some strings to get you in there as it is the best Cultivator University out there. The rest is up to your efforts."
"Hi I am Mr. Zephyr, call me Z its easier. Well good luck and see you tomorrow."
"Sup bro, names Mr. Terra and you seem like a Manly Man from your aura. Quiet dangerous too, I approve. Okay peace see ya tomorrow."
"Greetings, Mr. Aqua here and well I guess see you tomorrow."
The four Heads dragged their daughters along and did not let them have time to say bye and left in a hurry. Leaving Ethan and John at the lobby.
"Alright lets go home and meet your new family."
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They arrived at a apartment complex and when John parked his car he looked over to Ethan "Here this is a special watch. It has a built in communicator, tells time, can connect with the virtual web and has a room size storage that you can put your things in."
"I already have one of those I think. This was in the envelope." Ethan raised his left arm and showed the white watch that looked like a forearm brace.
John responded "Oh right, that old thing. Thats fine keep it on and I could just transfer your information to it and the storage card." He took out a small square from the watch and inserted it into a small port on the other watch. The small square is a speacial cube that can store infromation and items with the help of the special watches.
"Well you see because of your fragile situation I already enlisted you to be in my unit in the military. You see Ethan, grandpa, I would call him master but he would always hit me if I said anything other than grandpa. Any way we had a special connection and it broke so I knew DSC found you and, so I enlisted you and went to the airport. They will allow you to study and train before boot camp. Plus put you in my squad. Because, you are going to be in my squad they gave me this watch to give to you which every member has. Well, your gonna be the exception since you have that thing. We will talk about it more later, so lets go in their waiting to meet you."
"Oh do not tell anyone whats happened those who know are you, me, the Dragon Clan Heads, my wife and DSC. No one else needs to know, even those four girls you met don't know everything, so keep it that way. Its for the better."
Ethan nodded put his bag into the storage and Drac sitting on Ethan's left shoulder sunk into his left shoulder and entered his body leaving a black lightning tattoo. This shock Ethan a bit since he didn't know Drac could do that, and now he has two tattoos on both shoulders, welp. They walked to the apartment and what he saw inside surprised him a bit. There was a well adorned table with food, a cake, a cute dirty blonde hair girl who looks like 12 years old and a lady who has black hair with an elegant demeanor.
"Welcome home, big brother. I wanted to see you since forever. I'm Ruby Star-Flares" She smiled sweetly and went to give him a hug. It was a warm loving hug which surprised John. Ever since he told her about him she would always be angry not wanting him to live with them.
"Hello Ethan I am your new mom, Livia Star. Hopefully my incompetent husband gave you the watch and told you of the plans for you in the following few months. I know you just got here but after these few months you can make your own choices and want to make sure you fit in. First thing would be the test tomorrow which will tell us what type of elements you can wield and learn. But before that we can't do anything else." Livia said with a assertive but sweet loving tone.
"Alright I am okay with that. So not to be rude but I am really hungry, I have not been able to eat since this morning...." Before he could finish his stomach rumbled like a whale and well that caused everyone to laugh.
"Hahaha lets eat then and we can let all the important stuff go for now." John said this in a cheery manner and started to eat. They spent the rest of the evening eating and talking about who they were and what they did to try getting to know each other. Ethan found out quite a bit and it shocked him a bit. His new little sister is part of a private cultivator company and has been able to cultivate since elementary school. This is really rare since most people awaken their element at the last year of high school and that is what the cultivator admissions is for. His new mom is a well renowned scientist in cultivator technology making a bunch of things to help cultivators. And well John is part of Dimension Guard unit that fights against spirit beasts and that is going to be Ethan's new job as well for some time being. Since Ethan is not ranked yet his watch is white and will turn a different color depending on his element, rank and job in the unit. The memory in the square updated the watch to function like the other one with the other programs.
Most of the time they are very busy so they end up not being home most of the time, especially Ruby has long missions and is training. Luckily John and Livia found a spacey apartment near their work and rarely stay there for long periods of time. John only stays at the gates and Livia is the chief of her department so its mostly supervising those under her. They did not share that much just the basics as there was a lot of information to process. Being a long day for everyone, especially that they have lost someone who is like family, they decided to finish up eating, clean up and go to bed. Ruby has to go back to her company and the other 3 have to wake up early as well to go take Ethan to Dragon Cultivation University (DCU) to take the test.
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It is 5 A.M. with the sun still creeping on the horizon. The sunlight slowly crept into Ethan's room giving a golden glow. Ethan wants to wake up but is stuck inside a dream. He sees four shadows one with a blood red aura and heat emanating off of it, then to its right there is one where it is sturdy and unbreakable with extreme calmness one with nature, below the fiery one it is almost translucent and seeming to move fast but slow and sharp but also dull, and the last shadowy figure was deep as the sea calm and stormy moving flawlessly with a chilling aura. They all decided to speak "Ethar wake up for now it is time to accept us, and remember who you truly are." A sudden force was pushed up against Ethan suffocating him and ripping himself apart from the inside out. There was a strange change occurring within him like a lock almost opening up. On the outside his scales were turning white slowly and the transparent scales seemed to be the white scale's coating. On his back seemed to have something growing as well. But then, it all ended as quickly as it came. His whole bed was wet from his sweat and the pain finally subsided.
Just as this finished John walked in to wake up Ethan and was surprised to see that his scales from yesterday disappeared. Ethan woke up seeing John at the door and his eyes returned back to his normal brown eyes.
"Hey good morning Ethan, get dressed, get your breakfast on the counter and meet me outside. Oh wow!!! Your back to normal, no more scales and your eyes are brown now? Ehhhh, they were darker weren't they?
"Wait, my eyes are brown and yeah, they were darker. There was this weird dream with these four things, I don't know its hazy and was painful. Then everything just went normal."
"Sorry I can't help you with that dream but you should get ready. Good luck later your mother decided today would be a great idea to test her weird cultivator thingy. This woman is unbelievable I still need to train you and don't want to die yet. You know what just meet her downstairs and I'll see you there. I want no part in that crazy woman's ideas." John seemed like he was not up to do what ever she was planning and decided to go ahead by himself. He also looked like he sh*t himself just by thinking about it.
"Alllright. Sureee. I'll be down there in a bit." Ethan was a little worried about this. They don't know each other well but John was a little out of character than when they met. When he walked down stairs, Livia was a little too happy than she was yesterday. Not one ounce of seriousness.
"Good morning Ethan, so lets get going and there is a project I want to test out on the way there so lets hurry up." She did not explain much and just gave Ethan a big smile.
Ethan followed her downstairs and went to a special section of the garage. Livia opened the door and shocked what was inside. It was a human sized armor that looked like a white armored exo suit with certain transparent details.
"This is the latest prototype of mine that I created part of the last era line up. It is supposed to be for both cultivators and not cultivators to use for extra fighting capabilities and for transport. Well it is supposed to be able to transform into a vehicle and in the humanoid form it can fly. It hasn't been tested yet soooo, would you like to test it and if it works you can keep it. Either way once someone uses it no one can use it after them since it takes a lot of bio scans to make sure its the owner and only the owner can pass it down. You are the best candidate since you can use both the non cultivator mode now and the cultivator mode possibly later." Livia explained her motive.
"Okay but I have never used technology like this. Don't I have to go through some training." Ethan at this point was nervous. Something like this is very dangerous as the full capabilities of the machine is not tested yet and could harm him. Plus how does he get in it there is no lever and everything looks completely closed.
"Ooh that yeah no worries, it sends instructions to your brain and it should feel like its your own body. So go on." Livia pushed Ethan closer to the mecha and it started to open up by itself from the front. He walked toward it, turned around just right in front of it and some sensors started scanning every inch of him. The armor moved foward consuming him. It took all of his measurements and started to shrink and fit to his size. Right now he looks like a futuristic military combatant. Ethan started up the suit and heard a female's voice. "Hello master, I am Aki and I will be helping you to understand this suit. I see that you are Ethan Dracul and you are headed to DCU is that the correct pre start up information?"
"Yes it is, Aki." Wow so she had this planned all along. No wonder John was frieghtened, I wonder what did she did to him? Hehe well I'll ask him that later.
"Ethan, due to the mecha having its own AI system and it being a prototype one. We aren't sure of what it can actually do. Its never really been tested by a person because of the high risks of what could, maybe happen. Don't worry though your body should be strong enough." Livia gave a crazed smirk.
All the information that he needed was transferred into his brain and it seemed as Aki connected with his brain so everything was enhanced from eye sight to brain processing power. The boot up was done and Livia with a joyous face was already flying towards DCU using her wind element natures power. In a few moments of getting used to the suit running its first start diagnostics. The boosters on the back started up. He walked out of the garage to the drive way. As he stepped outside metallic wings on his back popped out and he flew off. In the humanoid form he then caught up with Livia who was beaming with happiness from her prototype success. On the way to the university they were chatting about the suit and doing arial maneuvers to pass on the time as their destination is a little farther than the military base and aparrently the school has its own portal to protect as well. This is used by the students to go to where the spirit beasts are. Also, due to the success of the suit not malfunctioning on their way to the university, Livia decided to upgrade Ethan's new suit to a battle suit to be more personalized and portable.