Hugh smiled at Kurt and gave him a heavy pat on his shoulder that nearly made the young lad drop on the floor of the cafeteria.

"See you later, little dude! You too, miss grumpy face!" the hulking youngster whispered on Kurt's ear before leaving with Park following right behind him while chuckling to himself.

Kurt, Trevor, and Gaby watched the two leave before gathering at their table and starting to chat amongst themselves.

The surrounding students also started to back away after seeing that the commotion was over but a few of them still kept sending a few glances in case the trio decided to start something else.

It basically became a tradition at the school that something always happens whenever Kurt is involved so everyone was either scared to get caught in a crossfire or scared of missing a good show.

"So what do we do, Kurt?" Trevor asked with a tremor in his voice. He also took this chance to return his scaled-covered hand back to normal after calming down.

"What else?" Gaby replied while holding an intense glare, "They picked a fight with us! Let's meet them after class and stomp all of their heads against the pavement!"

"No!" Kurt stated, much to their shock.

"No? But, Kurt!"

"We can't fall to their taunting, Gaby! Every single time I have a problem with someone I always try to solve it by fighting them. I can't keep doing this anymore! I don't want to be known as the kid that just picks fights with everyone for no reason."

'Well said, Kid, but I think that ship has sailed a while ago...' Dorothy commented through their telepathic link.

[Oh, shut up...]

Trevor nodded at him, "He's right! Besides... If we show that it's that easy to bait us into playing into their hands, they might start making this a tradition and continue to kidnap students all the time!"

"And that means nobody will ever want to be friends with me!! I'm gonna be an outcast forever!!" Kurt gasped as he started to recollect memories from his old life and his expression began to look like someone staring at a deep abyss, "We are not gonna play Hugh's dumb game!"

"What about the kid?"

"We just have to split up and find Leon ourselves. He has to be somewhere around the school. I mean... It's Hugh we are talking about... How well could he have hidden him?"

Gaby still didn't look satisfied, "Can't we just fight him a little bit? I really have a score to settle with that guy..."

Kurt's expression remained the same, "Not this time. We can't let him get the best of us with his provocations, we are above that... Right?"

"I don't mind being below that if it means I can kick his face..."

"Gaby!"

"Okay, okay... Gezz... Let's just find this Leon or whatever... I'll go look for Sara and ask her to lend a hand."

"I'm gonna ask my sister as well. She knows this school better than anyone" Trevor commented as all three stood from their seats and began to move towards the exit of the cafeteria.

"I'm gonna search on the rooftop. Leon said he likes to go there to hide so there might be a clue as to where he went" Kurt commented, "Oh! Also, Gaby, here!"

The purple-haired girl suddenly turned around perplexed before splitting from the two boys and almost flinched once she saw Kurt holding Dorothy right next to her face.

"Wha- What are you doing?" she asked while backing away. She still wasn't used to seeing the animal even though she had to take care of her once during Kurt's and Hugh's first fight two days ago.

At first, she assumed Dory was just a harmless pet, but after finding out Kurt was a prince she began to worry if this might be some sort of rare and expensive creature and worried if it was safe to stay next to it.

"Take Dorothy with you. She can speak to me through her mind so you can let me know if you guys find anything."

"Wait... She can do what!?"

"Good luck!" Kurt said before parting in order to start his search.

Dorothy showed no hesitation and simply jumped on her new carrier without even waiting for her to give permission.

Trevor couldn't stop looking at Dorothy climbing on Gaby's arm. It was his second time seeing the bird display such an affective behavior towards the girl despite never doing the same for him.

"Ugh... So jealous... I feel so betrayed!!"

He then proceeded to activate his talent and dived into the ground after becoming intangible.

Gaby stood there for a couple of seconds after the two were gone just noticing the way Dorothy kept staring directly at her.

"Uuhh... Hi...?" she mumbled, "You're not gonna eat me, are you?"

'...'

_____

_____

Kurt dashed through the hallways and into the stairway and ran as fast as he could until finally reaching the rooftop entrance.

He nearly ended up crashing against some of the students on his way there but thanks to his superior reflexes he managed to evade all of them with ease. The kid basically was like a gust of wind just passing by.

He began to search every corner of the place, trying his best to find some trace of where Hugh might have taken Leon, but ended up finding nothing.

The boy simply sighed and tried to connect with his owl, 'Dorothy, can you hear me? I didn't find anything on the rooftop, what about you two?'

The sound of her voice then suddenly started to echo inside his mind as she gave her reply, 'Your angry-looking girlfriend just reunited with your white-haired sister in the library. She's filling her in in the situation and we should start to look for that skinny-looking kid soon...'

'Dorothy, you do know they have names, right?'

'Eh... Too lazy to remember...'

Kurt sighed and ended his conversation in order to go back to his search. Since the library was located on the east side of the academy it would be best for him to move towards the west side to cover more ground.

"Has anyone seen Leon? Small guy? Dark blue hair? Very timid looking?"

He began to run around and occasionally asking a couple of his classmates if any of them had any idea of where Leon might be, but all of them either ignored him, acted like they didn't know, or simply giggled at him.

It took him a while to get what was so funny about his situation, but he soon realized that even though he was trying not to play into Hugh's game, that was still what he was doing.

His older brother had basically turned him into a mouse looking for a treat in the middle of the maze that was the dragon academy, and having him and his friends run around searching each classroom and chamber as if their life depended on it was probably giving him a big laugh right now.

If Kurt stopped to search his surrounding he could spot many of the students grinning at him while whispering to each other.

He simply kept telling himself to ignore them and continued his search.

The gym, the bathrooms, the storage, the lab, Kurt kept looking at every spot he could and asked anyone he met on his way but no sign of Leon anywhere.

Asking the teachers also didn't help as all the adults simply acted as if he was just playing a game with Hugh and even started to look slightly annoyed for some reason.

"I'm not playing hide-and-sick with my brother! I'm searching for a missing student!!" he would claim.

But they all just rolled their eyes and just told him not to be late for his classes.

Kurt tried to take a moment to breathe from all the running and tried to understand just what exactly he was doing wrong. Why wasn't anyone taking him seriously?

He tried to reach for a water fountain before hearing someone talking to him out of nowhere.

"It's better for you to give up".

"Eh?"

The boy turned around and met eyes with an old face from his past, one he was trying hard to forget, a young lad with muscular arms and a shaved head.

"You!!" Kurt screamed as his whole body began to twitch with rage. It was the same boy that dragged him into a warehouse with his friends and tried to hurt him and Dorothy under Hugh's command on his first day of school.

"Long time no see, little prince!" the boy replied. His expression was the same as every student Kurt had met so far. A calm smile as if he was trying to contain his laughter.

Kurt wasted no time and just grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and smacked his back against the wall.

"You must be really freaking stupid to show your face to me again after what you did!"

"Guagh! Whoa! Easy there, kid!" the boy said while raising both hands, "I'm not here to fight!"

"Oh, please. Of course you're here to fight! Everyone is always trying to fight me!"

"Not me! I learned my lesson, I know I can't beat you. I'm just here to keep watch."

"Keep watch?"

"Yeah. Hugh assumed you would try to run around like a dummy even though he already told you he would meet you after the classes were done. I'm telling you, you're not gonna find the kid like this. Just do what you always do and accept the challenge."

Kurt pulled him away and then proceeded to smack him against the wall one more time.

"Ugh!!"

"I'm not interested in Hugh's stupid challenge! Tell me where Leon is!"

The shaved boy simply smirked at him, "Or what?"

Kurt's eyes began to widen up and before he noticed his arm started to cover itself with a set of metal scales, forming a gauntlet around his hand.

"Or I'll break you like a twig!"

The boy noticed his metal arm and finally dropped his smile. Kurt's expression was the same one he had when he became enraged after hearing Dorothy cry in pain and started fighting back against his group all by himself.

"That's not gonna change anything... Even if you hurt me, Hugh still won't give you the kid back... Besides... Why are you getting so fired up? It's not like you two were even really friends or anything..."

"That... That's none of your business!"

"Whatever... If you really want to get the kid back, just play along with Hugh's game. It will all work out better if you do. Stop wasting your energy searching the school like an idiot. He's not here."

"Where is he, then?? Spit it out!"

Kurt lifted the boy from the ground, still only using just one arm, making the lad start to worry about his safety. But even after all that, he still refused to say anything.

"You think this is funny? What's wrong with you people? If you want to mess with me, then mess with me, but leave others out of it!"

The lad began to smirk again after Kurt's remark, "Are you kidding? Just look at what you're doing right now! You always act and look like a clueless toddler just wandering around oblivious to everything around you... But all it takes is threatening to harm anyone else close to you and some kind of switch is flipped inside of you! How can anyone NOT take advantage of that?

Also... Don't call us 'people'. We are dragons! This is the world you live in, little prince! We only have one rule! If you die, it's because you're weak, and if you live it's because you're strong!

And we have no need for the weak!"

Kurt's glare began to grow worse by the second. Every single word this boy muttered only made his desire to attack him grow even more, "Then... Let's find out which one you categorize as..."

The red-haired boy lifted his other arm and began to also cover it with metal scales, forming a second gauntlet.

"Wait, wait, wait, kid!!" the lad started to shake in an attempt to free himself as he watched the metal fist coming right towards his face.

But just as the punch was about to connect, Kurt's body began to glow and completely vanished in thin air, causing the kid to drop on the ground.

"Ouch! Ugh..."

He was so shocked that he almost forgot to breathe again and began to lean against the wall again in order to clear his head. The image of Kurt's eyes stabbing at him was engraved deep into his memory and he wasn't sure if he would ever be able to forget it.

"Ah... Ah, ha, ha, ha... Ha... Ha... Ah... Oh, man... These guys don't know what they are messing with..." he commented while rubbing his naked head, "That kid is a bomb just waiting to go off..."