Tokyo Bay Riders

5

"What's your eldest son's name?" He asked quietly, wiping away her tears with his glove.

"Genjirō" She teared up again.

"I will try my best to bring Genjirō home." With that Adonis released his hold on the woman's hand, tears in her eyes as she watched the captain stride towards his own dragon. Fury made a rumbling noise as Adonis got closer, the male smiling to the beast before him.

"You up for some tracking today buddy?" Obviously the beast did not reply with words, but the louder, more potentially happier sounding noises the dragon was making implied he was ready for anything. Despite the weight of the world firmly on his shoulders, and a teen potentially and most probably dead, he had to keep his spirits high. People die everyday, this case was no exception. Even their missing case's poor mother understood this.

"LET'S GO, FURY!" Even mounted from his dragon, Adonis had a good view of Chihiro and her son, who was pointing enthusiastically at the dragon and it's incredible wingspan. He couldn't help but smile before Fury took off into the skies and beyond.

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Originally, Dewa Sanzan was just home to the three sacred mountains and their respective shrines located deep in the mountainside. A very sacred and religious place for all to enjoy- tourists and people in general would travel to pray there, to sightsee and even to perform pilgrimages. Now it was also home to a couple of small farming dwellings nearby, specializing in crops and smaller livestock and dragon management. Dragons weren't an everyday sight here due to the remoteness and thickness of the surrounding forest and mountains.

Adonis couldn't wrap his head around the fact a young boy had been a potential victim. He hadn't spoken much about it within radius of the mother, but here, dragons would have easy access to wildlife and livestock. Why go for humans?

Now that he was up in the skies and the sun was at its highest, Adonis could finally take in the surroundings. It was almost terrifying how remote they were- all Adonis could see was mountain ranges and forest below. It had been like that for a while, he'd got no concept of time when in the air. As he scoured from above, he finally found the starting point for his search: a large open patch.
Alarmingly large.

How he found this was simple - it was either fate or simple coincidence.

Fury was cautious, a dragon always protected their rider. Upon reaching the ground, his tail wrapped around Adonis: a barrier, in case anything jumped out at the rider. Adonis grabbed his gun that was situated on the side of Fury's saddle, loaded it, and began scanning the perimeter of the space. No signs of life, bar a couple of small birds sitting in the grace, hunting for words. Other than that everything was dense in greens and browns, this was sacred land that was mostly untouched. It would be a pain to navigate.

Adonis wondered why he was even bothering, his gut instinct told him this teen was definitely dead if he'd got lost here. But another gut feeling was telling him to stay upon this path, and after observing the surroundings he'd soon confirmed that the intuition may have been correct.

Tracks. Footprints in the ground.

No human eyes could pick these up, but a rider's eyes were trained for even the slightest changes in the normal order. People shouldn't be this far off the public tracks. 

"Fury, stay close..." Adonis lowered the gun slightly, taking small steps towards the towering forest where the footprints disappeared into. Fury followed close behind, the beast small enough to follow Adonis through the density. It had been raining terribly in the early hours, the footprints more visible as Adonis took more steps into soil, bark and moss. Even more alarming - the prints were fresh - the soil was still wet underfoot and the rain clouds had barely even passed when Adonis made ground. Whoever made these tracks was close by, perhaps they were even watching him as he studied the prints out in the open.