I don't wanna write a story I just wanna worldbuild Arakita Yasutomo/Fukutomi Juichi; Yowamushi Pedal Word count: 581 Major character death, amputation, focus on introspection
Arakita had come late, to the highest-ranking circle of the King’s Royal Cavalry. Most of the Riders were trained concurrent with their dragons, enlisting together at the moment of hatching and bonding. Arakita, though, was special. Or ornery, as most would call it. Unorthodox. Interloping.
Unlike most of the Riders, he’d never had an egg hatch for him. There was talk -- he wasn’t chosen by a dragonling, he didn’t belong. He had no place among them. He wasn’t a true Rider, not without the soulbond that only formed after hatching.
The whispers tended to be very quiet, now, lest the whisperers be boiled alive by an angry dragon.
Arakita had always thought the Riders of the Royal Cavalry was a waste of resources. A treasonous statement, but he didn’t have any qualms about declaring how stupid he thought it was that the Rider-Dragons pairings were so arbitrary. He was a military man, through and through, and he rankled at being told to take orders from some fledgling kid who had more stripes on his collar just because a giant leathery lizard had liked his smell.
If they were going to have dragons in their military, they should be assigned to the best.
Like Fukutomi. Fukutomi had been the best, and Arakita had been proud to serve under him, and under his dragon Bian, a teal-blue beast of a wyvern with rather scalding capabilities. It had been quite something to see, Fukutomi leading the charge on the Northwestern Front, directing Bian’s geysers of boiling water across the enemy lines.
They were a good team. Good leaders. That is, until they weren’t, and all of them, Fukutomi, Bian, and Arakita, their closest general and at the time, literal right hand man, paid the price for it.
Arakita doesn’t remember much of it. But he remembers the concussion blast, and Bian roaring in pain, and the remembers the hiss of steam as the dragon trumpeted about, searching for his lost commander. And he remembers stumbling across Fukutomi’s body.
He doesn’t remember the part in between finding Fukutomi’s body and leading the troops in a retreat. Missing one arm, but riding on the back of a Riderless dragon.
Later, Arakita was awarded a medal for that battle. He’d melted it in the forge and buried the resulting lump of iron in the ashes of Fukutomi’s funeral pyre and promised to carry on for him.
There was a great deal of confusion, in the wake of the battle. Arakita spent much of it in a sterile recovery tent, re-equilibrating to the loss of his dominant arm, when he heard the worst of it. And, off-balance and stumbling, he’d made his way to the makeshift paddock where Bian was being held and announced that the entire debate was stupid, that the system was stupid, and that the entire military command was stupid if they thought that they could execute a Riderless dragon without casualties.
And as it turned out… they couldn’t.
Bian saw him, snorted rough and low through his nose, and shook off the nominal restraints. He spread his wings, casting a dark shadow across the dragon stables and parade grounds, and, touching Arakita with one wingtip, he rumbled a single note, low in his chest. Mine.
“I have never heard of a Riderless dragon claiming a new Rider,” someone whispered.
“Well shit,” Arakita had said, and with a flurry of confused activity, he became a Rider of the King’s Royal Cavalry.
FILL: TEAM KOZUME KENMA/KUROO TETSUROU, T
Arakita Yasutomo/Fukutomi Juichi; Yowamushi Pedal
Word count: 581
Major character death, amputation, focus on introspection
Arakita had come late, to the highest-ranking circle of the King’s Royal Cavalry. Most of the Riders were trained concurrent with their dragons, enlisting together at the moment of hatching and bonding. Arakita, though, was special. Or ornery, as most would call it. Unorthodox. Interloping.
Unlike most of the Riders, he’d never had an egg hatch for him. There was talk -- he wasn’t chosen by a dragonling, he didn’t belong. He had no place among them. He wasn’t a true Rider, not without the soulbond that only formed after hatching.
The whispers tended to be very quiet, now, lest the whisperers be boiled alive by an angry dragon.
Arakita had always thought the Riders of the Royal Cavalry was a waste of resources. A treasonous statement, but he didn’t have any qualms about declaring how stupid he thought it was that the Rider-Dragons pairings were so arbitrary. He was a military man, through and through, and he rankled at being told to take orders from some fledgling kid who had more stripes on his collar just because a giant leathery lizard had liked his smell.
If they were going to have dragons in their military, they should be assigned to the best.
Like Fukutomi. Fukutomi had been the best, and Arakita had been proud to serve under him, and under his dragon Bian, a teal-blue beast of a wyvern with rather scalding capabilities. It had been quite something to see, Fukutomi leading the charge on the Northwestern Front, directing Bian’s geysers of boiling water across the enemy lines.
They were a good team. Good leaders. That is, until they weren’t, and all of them, Fukutomi, Bian, and Arakita, their closest general and at the time, literal right hand man, paid the price for it.
Arakita doesn’t remember much of it. But he remembers the concussion blast, and Bian roaring in pain, and the remembers the hiss of steam as the dragon trumpeted about, searching for his lost commander. And he remembers stumbling across Fukutomi’s body.
He doesn’t remember the part in between finding Fukutomi’s body and leading the troops in a retreat. Missing one arm, but riding on the back of a Riderless dragon.
Later, Arakita was awarded a medal for that battle. He’d melted it in the forge and buried the resulting lump of iron in the ashes of Fukutomi’s funeral pyre and promised to carry on for him.
There was a great deal of confusion, in the wake of the battle. Arakita spent much of it in a sterile recovery tent, re-equilibrating to the loss of his dominant arm, when he heard the worst of it. And, off-balance and stumbling, he’d made his way to the makeshift paddock where Bian was being held and announced that the entire debate was stupid, that the system was stupid, and that the entire military command was stupid if they thought that they could execute a Riderless dragon without casualties.
And as it turned out… they couldn’t.
Bian saw him, snorted rough and low through his nose, and shook off the nominal restraints. He spread his wings, casting a dark shadow across the dragon stables and parade grounds, and, touching Arakita with one wingtip, he rumbled a single note, low in his chest. Mine.
“I have never heard of a Riderless dragon claiming a new Rider,” someone whispered.
“Well shit,” Arakita had said, and with a flurry of confused activity, he became a Rider of the King’s Royal Cavalry.