A Tale of Two Verties

Soldiers of the Sixth Apprentice Squad Víctor (Verti) Torres (a.k.a. Verti the Human and Verti the Kukulkan)

You know. It's like we were meant to be partners. I realized I belonged to him when he pushed his way out of his egg for the first time. He was just the most beautiful creature ever, shining like gold to my eyes. I needed to protect him from any harm. People talk a lot about the dragon and rider bond, but they don't know, even you don't know, and you have a dragon, what exists between Verti and me. We are two parts of the same living being.

— Víctor Torres "Verti"

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Víctor Torres "Verti", the Human

Víctor Torres, aka Verti, aka Victortilla, was born in the cold Madrid winter of 1998, surrounded by snow and unaware of his fate. Like many times before, he had just died in another place, in another time, killed by water, just to turn into a crying baby in a random Spanish hospital. The young proud parents did not imagine anything when they gave him Víctor as a name, and the kid would never know where he had heard the name Verti or why had he decided to take it as his favourite nick. He had an ordinary childhood, son of a chef and an engineer, and following his father's steps he ended up studying engineering. As a fun fact, he once consulted a luck reader just to have fun, and the old woman warned him to fear the sea. He never believed it, of course. Anyway, he left his studies on his first year to join the military and resumed his studying in the Cuatro Vientos Air Force headquarters.

That's where he learn his love for dragons. And it made him to secretly want to become a rider, but that would have made his mother worry too much about him and he didn't want that. Also, you need a training and preparation to become a rider that he lacked, and that would take years to achieve. Instead he joined the ground crews and resigned to never to fly on a dragon's back.

Until Verti's egg arrived to the base, of course.

Verti the Kukulkan, the dragon

Far away across the sea, in Mexico, a second Verti, freshly-killed in a different universe, was laid by a mighty Kukulkan female.

The Kukulkan, beautiful Mexican feathered dragons that had inspired legends and gods, are a protected species in all of Latin America, but they are also wanted for their scales and feathers, and unfortunately there is a black market of dragon eggs where Kukulkan's are a very valuable item. Verti's egg got kidnapped and sold quickly, to his mother's despair, and at some point he arrived, unhatched, to Spain, where the authorities, aware of the theft of a valuable Mexican egg, managed to rescue it safely. The Mexican quickly demanded it back, and the Spanish government was more than willing to please them, so they started preparing the travel and, in the meanwhile, the egg stayed in the warm, safe nursery of the Cuatro Vientos Air Force base. He wasn't expected to hatch until weeks later. Of course some people were wrong.

The meeting

Víctor would never know why he volunteered to work in the nursery that day. He might have been curious about the bright green egg that had laid there for a week now. He might have thought it was pouring and it wasn't worth to work outside. But he entered in the suffocating nursery that morning and someone saw the valuable egg move.

The workers panicked. There were screams. Someone ran off to warn a higher rank. Young Víctor stayed there, petrified, staring at the shivering egg, the height of his knees. There was a weird feeling trying to get through him. And when the baby dragon pulled his muzzle out the egg, there was a click in his brain.

Víctor found himself helping the little lizard out, under the horrified eyes of the workers, and no one reacted until the creature opened his round, golden eye and screeched. Then a worker screamed and several men grabbed him and tried to get him away from the valuable Mexican egg and future diplomatic mess, but the bond had already been created and the newborn would not allow those humans to touch his partner. The workers quickly learnt that Kukulkans can breathe fire since they hatch. Víctor would only hug the little thing protectively and shiver uncontrollably. The first thing he said was his name is Verti.

That sounded really epic, I gotta say, but it's not like I made that choice. It just came to my mind. I didn't name Verti, I just knew his name was Verti. And I knew he was mine and I was his. And no one could ever separate us from then on.

— Víctor Torres

The mess

It was a total, huge, massive, terrible diplomatic mess. The Mexicans wanted their dragon back, but the lizard wouldn't leave Víctor and Víctor wouldn't leave Spain. When Mexico agreed to let the Kukulkan stay in the country, the Spanish put rider and dragon in training and the Mexicans complained that the creature shouldn't fight or join an army and the countries had another argument. In the end, Víctor and Verti joined the Sixth Apprentice Squad under the promise to never fly against Mexican dragons. It wasn't a problem. The world was in peace and it would stay that way.

You didn't believe it, did you?

When Verti was a year old, and almost in is adult size, the civil war started. The pair's squad, compound by the weird cases that needed a special training, was forced to fight and fly for the rebels. That was the time Andrea Álvarez and her newborn Salt joined the squad and they made good friends. After two years of civil war, he was though still unaware of who she was: Ariadna Caballero, the daughter of the Commander Enrique Caballero, former dictator of Spain, slained with his family the day the war started. Víctor only learnt this after a disaster of a mission in enemy lands when the squad got caught by Ariadna's brother, Diego Caballero, in command of the loyalist forces.

This article is not about Ariadna and the loyalists madness so let's focus back in the Dynamic Duo. Verti and Verti were trained by the rebels and oficially working for them, but their loyalty to their friend was stronger, and they agreed with her to stop the civil war once and for all. I won't write a tale of the battles they fought without knowing they wouldn't die if there wasn't water involved, it's just too boring and I have 30 minutes left.

The end

Known traitors to the rebels, and somewhat of traitors in the loyalist side too, the Sixth Apprentice Squad found themselves finally cornered in the coast. After hours of resisting, they knew there was no way to escape. Not unless someone stayed behind. Though the Verties wanted to offer their lives, Ariadna refused to let anyone die for her, and the group resolved trying to escape in the night, all of them. Of course this was impossible, and Víctor the Human and Verti the Kukulkan had already made a choice. They would try to get out alive, but the first thing was to protect their friends and their only hope for peace.

There was a new battle in the skies the following day as the Squad desperately tried to escape their hunters. At some point, Víctor and Verti turned to their backs and Verti breathed her biggest fire stream ever in hopes that would give them time. It did, actually, but then Verti got hit in his wing by a massive bomb that interrupted the fire and made the dragon slowly fall. The Squad hadn't counted on that weapon. It was totally new. Verti got hit once and again and again and his partner could do nothing as they fell into the sea. They died drowned. And that probably saved the whole of Spain.

Species

Dragón

Life

1998 2021

Eyes

Dark blue/golden

Hair

Short and brown/none

Height

1'81/4'00

Weight

70kg/5tons