Gentle Giants And Hothead

"Well I don't have tomato plants here, you gotta bring your own."
Ava said with a grin.
So Baste's mom was still alive, huh? And she had siblings. She was lucky, Ava couldn't help but be a bit envious. Sure Ava was a Drakenhardt and apparently had a shitload of cousins and uncles and aunts, but she hadn't grown up with them, and Ava was still getting to know this huge clan. Maybe it was too big to feel like family
"I get Maris, but one of your siblings is actually named Anubis? As in the death god with a dog head? No offense, but that's kinda funny."
Ava said, and snickered a bit. Sauron let out a bark as he heard the word "dog", and he looked between Baste and Ava curiously. Ava sat up, not some wild flowers stuck to her hair, and let her upper body fall on Sauron's back for maximum scratches.

"Now I want some apple juice. How about we really get wasted sometime? Well, you get wasted, and I'm on standby with some tomato juice laughing my ass off."
Ava joked, and laughed. That mental image was really entertaining, as was the thought that someone could actually get drunk off of apples.
"See there, I didn't know about what your name meant. I just thought it sounded kinda like 'basket' or 'pasted'."
Ava said, waving her hand a bit before resuming scratching Sauron. This chat was kinda skirting around some sensitive subjects, but all in all Ava was having a chill time. Sometimes this happened, she met someone cool or fun enough to spend some time with, and then they never saw each other or talked again. Ava wondered if that would happen with Baste too, the girl seemed nice enough, and was Ava's age. Maybe Ava would greet her if they met at school.

"Don't ask me about meanings of names, my mom just named me Ava 'cos she wanted something short that rolled off the tongue easy. And Ava is just that. But she often said Ava sounded kind of meek and I'm everything but that."
Ava laughed a bit, remembering the banter she and mom had often had, and then the sadness crept in again. It had been almost a year since mom died and Ava still felt melancholy now and then. It was frustrating...
"And dragons don't worship gods, so I doubt we'd purposefully name ourselves after them."

"It's not a good idea to see me get pissed either and plenty of people have seen that. And I only set one of those people on fire and he was fireproof."
Ava snickered a bit, she wasn't kidding about the setting on fire though. One day she had gotten super pissed at Titus and had accidentally thrown some lava at him. But Titus was fireproof and so were his clothes and so was the entire goddamn house so in the end nothing had happened.

It was a pretty big surprise when Baste suddenly took Ava's hand, and her head shot up as she looked at Baste with confusion. Not that handholding or physical contact in general was a big deal for Ava, more like she kinda liked it, so she didn't shake Baste off or anything. Just answered her with a confused and amused tone.
"How in hell does someone get By One from Baste? That's really not on the name but on the person's brain. But now I kinda wanna call you By One, like a nickname."
Ava laughed a bit, whatever sadness had crept in a moment ago was pushed back.
"My name hasn't been butchered that many times, but some people have called Eva or Eve, once someone called me Awe. You know, just start carrying around recorder or something with you name's right pronunciation and when someone gets your name wrong you just play that."

Ava cackled a bit at the imitation Baste did, although she was gradually starting to wonder about what this girl's background was. She had mentioned Japan a couple of times, had she lived there before?
"If we're talking last names then you've got it easy. Do you realize how many people pronounce Drakenhardt as Dragonheart? Not that I care, I'm not really attached to that name, but it's hilarious how some members of the clan get pissed at it."
Ava snickered, and Sauron turned his head and licked Ava on the cheek, making her outright laugh. Ava got Sauron's slobber all over herself all the time so she didn't even bother wiping it away.

"Business card? Damn right those aren't necessary, those are for adults and businessfolk and the like, I'm just a high school student who happens to be a kickass lava dragon. I'll just aggressively correct anyone who calls me Eve, I ain't from the damn bible."
Ava grinned, and then looked at Baste a bit closer, she didn't really look Japanese, and her name definitely wasn't Japanese.
"So, what, you're from Japan? Was that where you did that righteous monster hunter gig?"

"I mean, guess it does, but it's not pronounced like that."
Not that Ava cared, people saying it Dragonheart didn't matter to her, she was just Ava. As for when Baste began explaining about contact cards and exchanging information or whatever Ava also noticed that it didn't sound all that interesting. But she didn't yawn or anything, just proceeded to shrug at the end.
"Eh, I barely use my phone anyway, the connection's bad deep in the woods and I've dropped it several times already. Here, look."
Ava dug out her phone and showed it, it was really worn and busted, the screen was cracked and it had clearly had a lot of contact with the ground and rocks. Ava grinned a bit.
"I think it's a miracle it still works."

Baste didn't go into much detail, obviously. You probably didn't shout around on this island how you used to hunt youkais or whatever. And even Ava felt kinda iffy about it, since dragon hunters were a thing as well. Though there were bad guys among the supernatural community as well, obviously. So someone had to take care of those too.
"That sounds like a fantasy drama series premise, kinda. Demon hunting in Tokyo or whatever. Actually I think I heard of a show like that. I think it was called Shadowhunters?"
Ava looked thoughtful for a sec, she didn't watch many series but she browsed Netflx sometimes.
"Anyway, there are bakenekos here, there are these triplets grade below mine, they're bakenekos. Don't know of any other ones though, I mostly keep to myself."