Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

6:51 PM September 16th. 2026

Washington D.C., the White House Helipad

The landscapers had been a flurry of activity all day, Camina had heard, as they prepared for the important visitors who were on that helicopter. Not just the landscapers, all the White House staff. Tours had been canceled. It had been hot sweaty work as well because the spate of nice weather which had graced the East Coast was continuing in uncomfortably warm fashion. It made the warlock glad of her armor’s environmental controls. She smirked a bit as she watched perspiration beading on the secret service agents’ faces and running down their unmentionables.

Overhead. a bright and shiny new helicopter’s rotors made their characteristic whuffwhuffwhuff as it descended onto the White House helipad through the evening haze. It had been hot in D.C. today, but the air was already cooling. Perhaps Camina would have been able to smell the scent of fresh-mown lawn if he visor had been open.

However, Camina had the foresight to close her visor so she wouldn’t have to squint against the gusting downdraft created by the helicopter. Beside her, the vice president squinted and tried not to grimace as grit bombarded her eyes. She couldn’t help it, Camina snorted at her. Seeing the woman’s discomfort a secret service mage shouted an offer to provide a barrier spell for the vice president over the linked communications network Camina was part of. Camina offered to ship his idiot ass back to his family in boxes of confetti sized bits if he jeopardized all their lives by initiating a spell when their guests were so close.

At least, that was what she wanted to say. What she actually barked at the agents was –

“No magic. Our guests will sense it.” And she didn’t have to elaborate further. They all knew who was coming. The secret service agents also knew that they weren’t equipped to handle this kind of threat, if the visitors chose to become a threat.

Which was why Camina had been called back to D.C. while her husband was missing and one of her children was currently in and out of consciousness from some kind of magical something-not-quite-radiation-poisoning which was probably actual magical radiation poisoning. Camina’s general disgust at the fact that this meeting even had to happen had come through in her tone of voice. How dare the Eastern Dragons play politics right now? How fucking dare, they try to keep up their high and mighty pretentions when they knew damn well that their kind were responsible for hundreds – maybe thousands – of deaths and billions in infrastructure damage.

That was why Camina was standing beside the vice president. Damned Eastern Dragon delegation couldn’t bear the insult it would be to lower themselves to stand among non-magical folk like the actual president of the God Damned United States of America. The fury burning Camina up on the inside was real. A white-hot inferno that left her seeing red and her breath coming in short furnace blasts from her nostrils as she clenched her jaw.

Outwardly, she was, well… Imagine there was a person who was always outwardly not just calm and stoic, but cold and hard seeming? Now imagine that person filled with the rage of a thousand suns possessed by cats trying to avoid a bath and nonchalantly standing at ease as she awaits orders wearing her techno-magical battle armor powered by divine magic and holding a holy weapon powerful enough to kill a dragon. A person who was worried about their family and the only thing preventing her from seeking vengeance on the ones who she considered responsible was the fact that her husband mightstill be alive, and her child might not die from magical radiation poisoning. So, she was adopting a wait-and-see-mother-fuckers approach to the whole situation.

As the helicopter’s engines died down and the wind subsided, Camina opened the visor on her helmet. Glancing over when the movement drew her attention, the vice president took one look at the expression on Camina’s face and shuddered slightly. Returning her attention to the delegates exiting the helicopter, she pasted on her best professional-welcome expression for the occasion. Not a smile per se, but nowhere near the veiled cold snarl of blankness on Camina’s face.

One… two… three… Only three individuals exited the helicopter. And they all appeared to be security, not the actual delegates. It was supposed to be a few human representatives from the court of the Chinese Empire accompanied by the rare presence of at least one, and possibly two, Eastern Dragons. There was some kind of discussion occurring at the aircraft as one of the individuals who had exited was holding a heated discussion with the other two and those remaining within. Two of the ones who had exited seemed to be security guards dressed in ceremonial garb. Very dashing and straight out of the eighteenth century.

The discussion had become an argument and was quite heated with raised voices becoming more distinct as the helicopter engine idled lower, with much curt gesturing. Someone pointed in their general direction and half the secret service agents went for their wands or weapons.

“Stand down.” Camina barked curtly into her mic and then gave her helmet a command that directed the external microphones to focus on the argument. Not surprisingly, it was in Chinese. Camina had never learned Chinese, but her suit had the ability to translate for her, something Michael had forgotten to tell her about for the first several years. So, she gave the command for that to happen and listened in with only a modicum of interest.

“They are deliberately violating protocol.” Someone hissed. “Look at her. She’s in full armor.”

“Well, what did you expect?” The woman who’d been trying to persuade the delegation to actually participate in the meeting and leave the helicopter replied reasonably.

“She’s not even supposed to be here. Our intelligence said she was deployed to New York and our ag– she was being kept distracted with busy work evacuating people.” That got an eyebrow raise out of Camina and the flames of wrath she was nurturing inside of her flared with new life.

“This is clearly an ambush meant to kill one of the ancient dragons.” That was where Camina had to stop listening as she didn’t just snort in amusement but outright chortled, before quickly regaining her composure.

“Hear anything interesting?” the vice president inquired, giving the Magicorps soldier a side-eye.

“Oh, yeah. You called it Madam Vice President.” Camina informed the woman who did smile at that.

“Pissing their pants because you’re here, are they?” It was the vice president’s turn to chuckle. While the resulting smile didn’t touch Camina’s lips this time, there was a new glint of amusement in her eyes as she responded. “Their own damn fault for refusing to be in the presence of a non-magical plebian like President Van Helsing. Or perhaps they were afraid that he had some secret dragon-killing knowledge.”

“Well, now it seems they may be worried about big bad Ascalon. They fear this is an ambush.” Upon hearing that, the vice president snorted her own mirth.

“Oh, the paranoia and arrogance of dragons. Perish the thought. All we need is another disaster like what’s happened in New York. Like one ancient dragon is worth that kind of pain.” In her head, Camina finished the vice president’s sentence for her. When we can just send you to kill them at home if we really wanted to. There had never been a reason to before. But maybe now, now Camina might be persuaded to take on that kind of assignment. Finally, one of the human delegates that was still in the helicopter got out and huffed as un-huffily as he could toward the waiting American greeting party.

“Madam Vice President,” he began in a not particularly respectful and quite accusatory tone that was trying to pretend that it was neither accusatory nor disrespectful. “We were under the impression that this was a peaceful meeting to discuss the circumstances of the tragedy in New York.”

“Oh,” the vice president cooed in the soft gentle tones she was known for when discussing politics. “Is there some conflict nearby of which I am not aware? This is a peaceful meeting for our two great nations and noble dragons.” Her bewildered expression and her absolute surety that that ‘there was nothing wrong or abnormal in this situation at all’ seemed to irritate the Chinese man speaking to her.

“If this is intended to be a peaceful meeting, then why is Camina Wattkins here?” he asked loudly and clearly disgruntled. Pausing for a second, he caught his breath before almost shouting the second question, which was really more a statement of the obvious. “In full armor?”

The vice president really was hamming up her agreed upon role and showed herself to be taken aback by the insinuation of both statements. Before she could respond, Camina gestured for her to wait and stepped forward slightly, servos on her suit whirring quietly with each movement. Her advance clearly startled the foreign security agent, and he stepped back several paces with wide-eyed horror written all over his face.

“With your permission, I’ll handle this question, Madam Vice President.” She smiled kindly at the woman beside her who nodded permission, before Camina turned back to the man before them both. The smile she gave to himwas anything but kind. Her lips twisted and her expression morphed into one of a hungry predator and it chilled him to his bones. The instruments on her suit told Camina his heart was racing, and his breath was coming in quick little puffs that looked like the beginning of a full-on panic attack.

“What happened in New York was an avoidable tragedy,” The Last Line purred in coldly reasonable tones. “Avoidable because the dragons who died, were not on U.S. soil legally. They weren’t documented. So, they could not be monitored and protected. Like U.S. laws and international treaties specify and require specifically to prevent such events from happening. Was this an act of war? Was this an attack on our sovereign soil? Was this espionage? Why were those dragons here? We wouldn’t want a misunderstanding to unnecessarily escalate our response. Please, let the dragons and your superiors know that I’m here, at the request of our president, to ensure America’s response to this tragedy remains… proportional.”