It was noon, and the city of Los Angeles had woken up.
Naturally, there was the confusion before the chaos. Undoubtedly, people had risen out of bed hearing screams, the clanging of metal, and the occasional roaring. What they thought was causing the commotion, Lily could never guess. A movie in the making?
Anyway, several hundred ordinary people had gone out for their morning walks and to get to work. Just so it happens, the park (which was the battlefield) was directly in the center of the metropolitan area, with the perfect amount of open space for the morning walk. In fact, everyone who took their walks went to the park. How convenient - and unfortunate. So the first two hundred or so people came out of their homes refreshed and ready for the day only to find out - ta da! - the park was filled with dragons and screaming armed people, half with pointy ears and half who looked very, very small. Not exactly your best wake-up call.
If Sophie had sent out a danger vibe, it hadn't worked long.
Lily had watched way too many action movies when she was a kid to imagine the chaos that was about to happen. And she was right. The people started to shriek and scream and call the police. And of course, they were all running away. To make things worse, the dragons, who preferred to be in open spaces so they could easily spot running targets, all charged after them. So now two hundred people were being chased by one thousand dragons who were being followed by a mix of two thousand dwarves and elves whacking each other with their favorite weapons. Lily sighed. Grabbing her friends (which included a very dazed Stacy), she dashed after the chaos.
The rampaging chaos had flowed onto the roads, causing a major traffic jam and of course, more screaming. The honking of horns collided with the rest of the racket to create an absolutely ear-splitting noise. The dragons roared and started to flip cars over. "Spread out," Lily told her friends. Since she and her friends were at the end of the crowd, she attacked as many dwarves as she could to make it easier to get to the dragons.
All around Lily, people were screaming, sirens were wailing, dragons were roaring - and annoyingly, Sophie was nowhere to be seen. Lily tried to assure herself that the sorceress had run away in fear and wasn't watching over them and adding new monsters to the battle. In fact, she tried not to think about Sophie at all. Don't think about her, she told herself. She's not going to cause the apocalypse. Don't think about Sophie ... too late.
Lily tried to shake all thoughts of the evil sorceress out of her mind and focused on the problem at hand. Her sword wasn't of much use on attacks up close, so the best she could do was defend herself. Her friends seemed to be having the same problem. The unusual roar of gunfire startled her.
The police had arrived. Hundreds of officers drove up in their shiny cruisers and filed out, screaming orders into walkie-talkies and fumbling to load their weapons and doing whatever else it is that frightened policemen do. Helicopters soared overhead, firing at the dragons, which was useless since the bullets bounced right off the dragons' hard scales. Lily hated the thought that the police were wasting good weaponry on the dragons. She sheathed her sword and ran towards the police officer that seemed to be screaming the most orders. "You need better weapons to defeat those creatures! Can you stop the helicopters?" she yelled.
The officer looked ather, a fifteen-year-old girl with herhair in her face and a sword at her side, giving him orders to stop an attack."And why should I trust you, miss?" he said. That simple question utterlystumped Lily. He was right; why should shebe trusted? "Um ... because you can?" The officer was outright stubborn."Sorry, but I'm the one who's giving orders, not you," he said crossly. Justthen, several dwarves charged towards them, hollering and swinging axes. Lilystepped forward, knocked the weapons out of their hands, swung her sword, andin several seconds, the dwarves were flat on the ground. As Lily turned back, adragon swiped at her and barely missed, so she had no further time to chat. Shelooked over her shoulder and snarled, "Just do it!" at the officer. Lily dodgedthe dragon's razor sharp claws and disappeared into the crowd.