The Black Dragon

Chapter Ten: Stride

"speaking"
'thinking/thoughts'
((sign language))

I apologize for not updating as frequently as I wanted to, I have been in the process of moving into a new house as well as transferring into a new school. Both processes have been going quite smoothly but writers block has been my biggest issue. I will try to get back to writing this story soon. Thank you for taking a moment to read this.
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Third POV

The city was quiet as the sun slowly made its way past the horizon. There was near silent thudding from around a street corner that continuously got louder until a familiar black haired strider peeked around the corner. It leaned forward and stretched its neck just a little before sniffing close to the ground. The strider wrinkled their nose at the smell of burnt asphalt but there was another scent that the strider had been following for the past few hours. It trotted over to a small door that led to the interior of a warehouse and sniffed the door before it stood at an odd angle and used one of its front legs to knock on the door. The strider waited for a minute before it heard a small click and felt some weight on its back. It turned its head around and saw the barrel of a familiar sniper rifle aimed right between its eyes.

The strider's bottom lip jutted out and it looked at James as he held the gun to the strider's head. It flinched back a little when the bruise on its forehead touched the end of the gun. James lowered the gun a little before putting it behind his back again and jumping down from the toilet's back. The toilet simply watched James as he walked back into the warehouse before ducking down and looking through the door, which he obviously couldn't fit through. James looked back at the door after a moment and thought about letting the strider in or not. The strider had brought no threat, it didn't have a tracker, and it seemed like a curious child rather than an aggressive head sticking out of a toilet.

James's chest heaved slightly for a moment, James's form of a scoff or huff, before walking over to one of the garage doors at the front of the warehouse. He undid the lock before opening up the door, just enough so the strider could get in. The strider leaned down on its front two legs and moved into the warehouse. As soon as the strider was inside, James slammed the garage door down and locked it back into place. The strider had turned and watched James as he did this, and made no move to stop James in any way.

James felt no ill will or intent to harm him coming from the strider, though the strider felt as if it made a wrong move that James would take action. ((So do you have a name or what?)) James signed to the strider. Though the strider seemed to not understand the hand gestures, so James did it again but at a slower pace. This got nothing but a confused head tilt from the strider, 'So sign language is out of the question...' James thought to himself, trying to refrain from thinking too much as of recently due to the past events. He suddenly remembered seeing a notepad somewhere in the breakroom after he had finished his existential crisis. So he turned away and sped over to the breakroom, appearing in a subtle flash of green, before starting to look through the drawers. He eventually found a notepad and a pen and then sped back over to where the strider had been patiently waiting. James clicked the pen a few times and scribbled on the top corner of the notepad to get the ink out of it, or to just check if it was dry or not. Luckily the pen had ink in it so James wrote a few things down on the notepad, the first thing being 'Why are you here?' written in black ink. The strider tilted its head before letting out a quick huff through its nose, similar to how a cat would. James took that in a way that they were unable to answer, likely due to different languages but James had a chip that allowed him to understand the skibidis. 'So why can't I understand him?' James wondered to himself. Though James realized after a moment that this particular strider hadn't uttered a single word included in the skibidi language. Rather they communicated through facial expressions and sounds that animals would make, such as huffs, snorts, stomps, etc. 'Why are you so different from the rest?' James wondered. 'Are you like me now?' he continued to ponder for the next minute or so before the strider brought him out of his thoughts with a loud stomp caused by one of its mechanical legs.

This caused James to tilt his head and compress his wings together to hide the slight irritation. The strider walked over James, making sure to avoid hitting James with his gun, and looked around the warehouse before walking over to a whiteboard that had random scribbles on it. It leaned forwards and picked up one of the markers in its mouth and turned its head so the marker cap was in James's direction. James walked over and yanked off the marker cap, startling the strider a bit due to James's aggressiveness. The strider let out a quick huff through its nose before attempting to awkwardly write something on the whiteboard, writing over the scribbles already present. After a few moments of awkward silence, the strider turned its head away and spat out the marker. What was written on the board in big squiggly letters was the name George, though it was spelled so wrong that it made James's microprocessor heat up by just looking at it. Instead of being spelled normally like George, it was spelled Jordge, pronounced the same way but spelt entirely different. James facepalmed and the strider looked proud of themselves for trying. James just waved the strider off and walked back in the direction of the breakroom. The strider followed behind James but they couldn't fit through the small door that James promptly shut in their face. He's had enough of the skibidis for today and he won't be tolerating them for the next few days.