Chapter 19: Inside the metal Dragon

I woke up to the sound of metal banging and the smell of steel and blood. I had a headache and I was in a long hallway that shifted and moved and slid like I was on a long cross town bus or a subway. Their was screeching of metal against metal too. I realized I was all alone and freaked out sprinting along down the hallway finding that I was in a maze of hallways. 

I ran and ran and slowly came across Joyce. 

"What's going on?" she yelled. 

I was freaking out earlier... but her freaking out kind of annoyed me into pretending I was calm and that it was no big deal... so I shrugged my shoulders. Now instead of running we walked and stumbled. 

We saw some animals and insects pass by as well as people who we tried to talk to but they just ignored us. Eventually we ran into  the Monk, Wolf and his crew, as well as other people we recognized from the performance. 

"What's going on?" People shrugged. Some people were afraid. Some people were not afraid at all but just kind of oblivious to what was even going on... whatever it was. 

Finally we passed through a few doors.  and came to an opening which looked like a giant mouth with teeth. Outside  we saw  the giant statue... only now he was way bigger than two stories, Wold made eye contact and suddenly seemed to go into a trance and started dancing certain moves which the statue copied... and in this way the thing we were riding was brought down from the air until we landed in the ocean. We all jumped out and got on top of what turned out to be a giant metal Dragon. 

We started swimming around and sort of forgot that this could potentially be a problem. We were relaxed because the giant statue seemed to be in control of Wolf and the scales of the dragon were actually packages of food. It had fruits, baos, soy milk... all in little plant like containers and seemingly anything you could think of. 

From a distance we saw Zhang Fei, our lion swim closer and riding him was Nara and Jinn.

"Where were you guys! it's been a whole week! you left us! we had to pretend at school that our grandparents were watching us. Luckily Zhang Fei can take human form and played along!"

"You can take human form?" I asked Zhang Fei... who simply licked his paws. "Are you sure?" I asked Nara.

"Oh you are going to pretend I am making up stories... like I am a child and you are an adult after we are rescuing you? We should just leave you here!"  Nara said. But we climbed onto Zhang Fei and  waved goodbye to Wolf and the monk and everyone else. They appeared to be working out how to get control of the Dragon itself, which was now a floating kingdom of its own, and we also saw the Lion Statue that we had brought to life. 

"I had something else to tell you about... I will send an Eagle to you with a message. Look out for it." Said the monk. 

Our family went home and we allowed the kids to do whatever they wanted for three weeks since they had "saved our lives" on the ocean and since they had functioned just fine on their own anyway.