Chasing Lights (Aurora)

Aurora's primary concern since the dragon attacked the city had been, not just bringing the city back to its former glory, but making it better than before. Her focus had been the slums given it was the area of the city most desperately in need of assistance. Since then, many of the buildings were now upright and actually up to code where the previous ones weren't. There were flowers and trees planted, actual grass growing, the streets were widened in a few areas and were completely free of any trash. The reconstruction was far from over, but there was noticeable progress and signs that the area wouldn't be as decrepit as they once were.

Aurora herself was acting as a makeshift crane at the moment. No one here had heavy machinery (yet), so she was dissolving several planks of wood or steel beams so they could be reformed on the higher parts of the building and placed properly. The lack of heavy machinery was seriously slowing down the reconstruction efforts given how much they needed her to finish some of these buildings. She would have to rectify that in the future, but for now she was okay with helping them.

It didn't matter that it was night time, if people were willing to work they could work easily. Aurora's aurora was bright and was more capable of lighting up an area than any street light ever could hope to be. The people working under it would be able to see almost as clearly as they could during the daylight, with only a little bit more disorientation because of how rapidly the colors of her aurora changed. It was large enough right now that it could easily be seen from a great distance, even if Aurora herself would be a little bit harder to find. She wanted to have a better view of what was going on without getting in the way of the workers, so she was standing on the roof of a nearby ruined building. It was tall and somehow still standing despite being badly burnt. The only reason she hadn't bothered to take it down yet was for situations like this. Once there were more high places for her to stand on this building would quickly be demolished by her power. She wasn't too worried about it collapsing under her, not because she thought it wouldn't, but because if it did she could stop her fall easily.

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Aurora materialized the last few beams up to where they needed to be, and the workers continued to work on the frame of the current building. At the rate they were working, the frame would likely be done in the next few hours, and the building itself by the end of the week. For now, her part of the job was done, so it was time to find something else to do. Before she could think too hard about what else needed to be done, something else managed to find her. She heard her name from the streets below. She called her aurora back to her feet and jumped off the edge of the building, spawning bits of concrete under her feet to jump off of and slow her fall. She landed on the ground level with a loud clang as the metal bottoms of her boots hit the sidewalk. She folded her arms and looked at the machine with a fairly disinterested expression. Her voice didn't sound too far off from someone snapping at someone, but she didn't mean anything by it. She was just addressing the machine.

"What?"

"Who the fuck told you that?" she raised an eyebrow. "I doubt anyone in this city knows a damn thing about dragons, myself included. I'd suggest the Keepers, but even the ones you're likely to be able to talk to were running around that fight like clueless idiots like the rest of us. The ones that know anything are probably too important to even be bothered to fight the damn thing," she scoffed. "I doubt I can tell you anything that you wouldn't have seen if you were there, and if you weren't...well that makes me less inclined to give a shit about anything you want."

Aurora kept her arms folded and stared at the machine suspiciously. It was impossible to tell whether there was a person in there, a super controlling it remotely, or a super created AI. These were all possibilities, and most of them still meant that it could lie. She couldn't eliminate that possibility, so what it came down to was how much she thought she could believe in this machine's words and how much she was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. In the end, it wasn't that unreasonable to miss dragons. This was her first encounter with one despite living here for her entire life, just because her family always took vacations around the time they showed up. With the way it was talking, she could at least believe that if it was able to get to where the dragon was, it would have.

"Not as much as you're probably hoping for. It was a giant mutant shark of sorts that appeared to have the ability to annihilate everything that came close to it and could see the future. It started in the ground, swimming through it like it was water, until we pulled it out. From there, it just flew above us and used the cannons on its body to attack the city from a distance. Once we were finally able to cut it open it became clear that the inside of the creature was bigger than the outside, so there was another power at work. Once we defeated it, whatever was keeping it structurally sound collapsed and it exploded into a fireball and the remaining pieces were entirely mundane. That's all I know. I don't think going into more detail about the fight would be helpful."

"Far as I could tell, there wasn't anything unusual about them. Most of them just disintegrated once whatever power was holding them together gave out. Then the dragon exploded, burning away a lot of what was left. What was left didn't have any sort of power, it was no different than finding dinosaur bones or something. It wouldn't surprise me if some people carted off some of it to study, but it doesn't sound like anything interesting was found," she shrugged. "No rumors or anything have been floating about. It wouldn't surprise me if someone in Pandaemonium grabbed something, but fuck if I know who did. Pandaemonium is less of an organization and more of a collection of individuals who do their own thing and sometimes tolerate each other. I only have a general idea of what other people are doing because I put in the effort and look, not because there's some central power or unifying element."

"No, I do not lead Pandaemonium," Aurora rolled her eyes and her expression flattened. "I would even go as far as to say that Pandaemonium doesn't even have a leader, no matter what stupid titles people decide to give themselves." The machine's question just made her stare for a moment. "Given I just finished my part in rebuilding another building this is probably about as good a mood you're going to find me in. Everyone here just knows jack shit about dragons."

The tone in the machine's voice wasn't lost on her. Aurora just blinked slowly and looked at it dismissively. It was ironic that a machine of all things was speaking to her like that given she could turn it to dust with a single thought. She briefly considered doing so, but turned her attention to the half burnt building she was standing on before. With this new building nearing completion, it was about time to tear down this burnt one. She could give it a little head start. Aurora glanced in the burnt building's direction and large chunks of it started turning into sparkling particles and collecting with the rest that made up her aurora. Without bothering to look back in the machine's direction she shrugged.

"No, probably not, but any time I hear anything substantial about dragons that doesn't sound like the conspiracy theory of the week, I spread it around the horde. If you pay attention I'm sure you'll be able to pick it up too."