Okay so This became a bit of a rant over realizing one on my childhood series is actually terrible. and not terrible in a 'wow the plot was actually silly' or 'the animation really isn't that great' but more in an actually disturbing way. I added an intro bit for people unfamiliar with Dragonriders of Pern. If you want to skip the Intro piece and rant piece, scroll until you reach not bold text.
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INTRODUCTION A/N For Dragonriders of Pern/basic world info
A slightly sci-fi dragon story. Basically, humans colonized a world, Pern, got stranded on the planet and eventually forgot about their homeworld of Earth as time passed. So it's a fairly medieval setting.
However, the first settlers had a major problem, in the planetary system this planet was in, another planet orbited the same star. (It's been a while, I can't remember the exact details) Every 200 years or so, the other planet's orbit would pass very close to Pern. That planet had a parasitic lifeform called 'Thread' which are basically mindless shimmering gray threads that eat away at anything organic that they touch. The close orbit causes thread to fall from the red star to Pern at random intervals for 50 years. As you can imagine, that's pretty bad. It eats crops, animals, people and once it settled in fertile soil it renders it barren.
The settlers panicked but noticed that a local lifeform, the firelizard (which are basically tiny, catlike dragons) had adapted to chew a phosphorus rock and emit flame to char the thread above their nests/territories. These animals were also able to bond telepathically to humans if the human fed them at birth. So with the last of their advanced technology, they bioengineered the firelizards to be larger and protect humans from thread.
So in a sense, the dragons were bioengineered to kill thread and not harm humans. They were telepathically bonded to human riders at birth. These Riders would then ride their dragon into battle against the thread. They were designed to be pacifistic since they're all mentally connected with each other and to have terrible long term memory. This ensured that even if they were injured or traumatized in a threadfall, they would quickly forget about it so they return to flying to combat thread. Their human riders are meant to anchor them to the long term and give them direction.
Dragons are capable of the three T's, Telekinesis (though it took a ridiculous number of years for them to figure that one out), Telepathy (Talking to their riders) and Teleportation (They slip into a cold dark place for about three seconds before appearing wherever or whenever they visualized, called going between.). Dragons also go between one way when they are mortally wounded or to commit suicide when their rider dies. A rider can survive their dragon's death, but it permanently scars them for life.
Now onto the dragon colour hierarchy. The more common the colour is, the lower rank it has. The colours go from common to rare. Green-Blue-Brown-bronze-Gold. Green and Gold are the females and blue, brown and Bronze are the males. The Weyr (place that dragonriders live) is incredibly colour biased. You can only reach certain ranks if your dragon is the correct colour.
50% of all dragons are Greens which are all female. They are the smallest and most agile but have the lowest endurance. A green cannot fly for a full threadfall. They 'rise to mate' or have heats a few times a year. Since these are the bulk of the dragonforce, they are made to consume the phosphorus rock that allows them to produce flame ('firestone') which also renders them infertile. The general genders of their riders change with the political climate of Pern. Basically, it used to be all females until there was a huge catastrophe/disease and they were needed to make children instead (what the hell man) and men were made to ride greens instead. This makes things super awkward at mating time. People forgot about women ever riding greens, medieval sexism occurred. And then Mirrim (a girl from the main series) impressed a 'fighting dragon' and it snowballed from there. So basically greens take anybody as a rider. Green riders are not allowed positions of leadership.
30% are Blues who are mainly staffed by males though very strong females can get picked. They are fairly fast but have far more stamina than a green. They mostly mate to greens. They are not allowed positions of leadership but can teach new riders.
15% Brown are mostly ridden by men and even more rarely then with the blues, women. They are known for being solid and reliable. They can take teaching posts and act as second in command. They also commonly mate greens. They occasionally try to mate Golds but are nearly always out flown by a bronze unless the Queen herself choses to mate him.
5% Bronze are the top of the male hierarchy. They only impress men. These riders lead the Weyr in high positions such as Weyr leader and Wing leader. They compete fiercely for the queen dragon's favour. Hilariously enough, if the bronze is not lucky enough to catch a queen(there is a 5-to-1 imbalance after all), it is nearly impossible for them to catch a green as they are simply too fast and nimble for a hulking bronze.
1% Gold are the very top of the heirachy and all colours defer to them. They only impress women. Golds cannot produce flame and sole importance lies on their ability to reproduce. Their riders lead and organize the day-to-day activities of the Weyr. The oldest Queenrider in each Weyr is known as the senior queen or Weyrwoman. Some Weyrs decide the Weyrleader according to whichever bronze mates the senior queen.
So canon is an incredibly discriminatory heirachy heavy with poor decisions. The method of determining Weyrleader alone is stupid. That's why in the books there are incredibly mismanaged and idiotic Weyrs. Because the succession method is poor.
So basically, when I write for Pern, I do what I want. I'll ignore anything I find dumb and rework it till it makes sense. And the gender-specific colour to rider thing is not a thing. That just makes things lame.
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GENERAL A/N for Dragonriders of Pern stories
Looking back on it, dragonriders of pern was actually kinda terrible with all their relationships. The dragon factor makes basically all of it rape. And though I adored the sci-fi backstory and it being the only rider-bonded-to-dragon story without any magic involved whatsoever, the colour system regularly leaves me in despair.
So when writing AUs of other characters and series in the Pern setting, I take extreme liberty in changing up the disturbing canon to something I like better. I don't outright ignore canon, I just used the gaps in what is left unsaid. For example, the whole, greens are infertile because they eat firestone. I am of the firm belief that if they don't eat firestone, greens are fully capable of laying. That kind of stuff. Also the gender specific riders for each colour is ridiculously silly, I don't much bother with it. Honestly, even though I love the dragons, canon Weyr life is disturbing and I personally would be terrified living in such a place, even if I had a dragon.
However, the only other series I know with solid telekinetic dragonrider bonds is Eragon, and that brings in a whole other kettle of fish with the magic system, the different races and the actual plot. (Because you couldn't just use it as a setting as Alegasia had a different living climate depending on the timeframe. Eg before the fall of riders, during Galbatorix's reign or after it)
So since Dragonriders of Pern has a fairly plain climate that basically remains the same, I'm stuck using it every time I have a dragonrider AU idea. It allows slice of life but also allows excitement in the form of Thread. And fitting characters to dragon colours can get pretty amusing.
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Title: Sutra Wings
Series: Dragonriders of Pern AU nobody asked for. Saiyuki
Characters: Featuring the Sanzo-ikkou as dragonriders
The sun beat down heavily on the dusty road, the only reprieve from the heavy heat being the steady wind that kicked up dust with its passage. What little vegetation that stubbornly clung to the road with grasping tough roots were far too sparse to offer any manner of shade to travelers. It was hot and dry and a pure nightmare for any soul seeking passage, but it was also the only way bar dragonback to reach the Hold on the Eastern coast. No one in their right mind would dare request dragonriders to transport goods like mere herdbeasts, so this road was a major trade route despite its inhospitality.
A man crouched behind a helpful collection of boulders, flat on his belly and eyeing the road with single minded purpose. His belly was achingly empty; his name was disgraced and he had sand stuck in unmentionable places. To put it lightly, he was a down-on-his-luck bandit, lying in wait for a victim. Several similar minded exiles lay in wait in other hiding spots along the road, desperate and cruel enough to kill passersby and steal their belongings for themselves. They were a hapless and desperate bunch, exiled for various crimes against their fellows. If they regretted it or not mattered little in the scheme of things, to survive outside a Hold they needed to continue their criminal ways. This route was perfect and bountiful for entrepreneur thieves; the trail was so long and arduous that travelers had to carry large amounts of supplies which made them prime pickings for larceny.
Walking along the road was a tall slender figure robed in white, a brown bag easily visible against the bright robes. The figure moved with a grace and poise that spoke of high class. At first glance, they had thought the person to be a woman. Locks of blond hair framed a slender face that could not be described as anything other than pretty. However, the pretty hair was hacked short and ragged, with long bangs left alone to nearly cover flashing sharp eyes. At a closer glance, the robes had a distinct male cut and there was no chest to speak of. The pretty face was harshly contrasted by the fierce scowl it was set in. The clenched jaw around his cigarette brought attention to his Adam's apple, and irrefutably proved his gender.
"He's travellin' light an' alone." One of them whispered. "He's prob'ly a Harper or suchlike."
His buddy shoved him slightly, with a wicked grin. "They carry import'nt stuff right? Even if the bag's small, 's prob'ly got someth'ng expensive!"
The leader of the group, a particularly large and sly-minded exile that had squabbled his way into being the top dog, nodded and signaled the group to spread out.
"We'll probably get a good profit offa what he's got." He grinned foully, exposing several yellow teeth. "If he ain't got anything we could always sell him. That Holder lady a few holds back always likes her pretty boy drudges."
They snickered among themselves as they split up to head to their positions, already imagining the food, wine and women their new acquisition would bring them. The man continued to trudge along the road in a foul temper, seeming unnoticing of the figures that were flitting among the rocks.
The men tensed in their hiding positions, ready to spring upon their unsuspecting prey. A minute, two, and finally the man was close enough. They rushed forward as a group, roaring and hoping to easily scare the traveler into submission with the chaos.
The man stared at them flatly as they approached, entirely unimpressed with the show of force.
Rather than being startled, his scowl became more pronounced as he tucked his hands into his sleeves and stepped back onto a firmer part of the slipshod road. The men spread out evenly, cutting off chances of escape and brandishing weapons with ill intent. They had leant early on that the more threatening they looked, the quicker their targets would panic and drop their supplies.
"Hand over ya' stuff and nobody gotta get hurt!" The biggest and therefore de-facto leader leered, giving the man an obvious once-over for valuables.
The man robed in white deliberately dropped his spent cigarette and stamped it out against the sand.
The blond calmly pulled out a cigarette pack from within his sleeve. He ignored the bandits as he shook out another. He lit it and breathed in deeply, relishing the burn in his lungs.
"You guys must be the numbskulls robbing this area." He spoke, voice calm and steady.
The men grinned rottenly, proud of their notoriety. "Yeah? If you're scared, just hand over your stuff!"
He withdrew his hand from his sleeve quickly, a glint of silver in his grip. The silver was revealed to be a small revolver as it was leveled at the leader's head.
"I give you one option." The man said in a clipped and annoyed tone. "Back. Off. And maybe I won't shoot any of you."
"You don't have the balls for it, darling." The leader stared him down, eyes shrewd. "Even if ya shoot me, the gang could take you down before ya get anywhere."
The blond drew the gun back, eyes sharp and aquiline features bared in a far too feral grin.
you wanna bet?
His face transformed from pretty if harmless aristocrat into something still pretty, but more in terms of the beauty of a predator that was to be admired at a far distance, dangerous and wild and full of far, far too much teeth. An unpredictable precocious beast that was all grace and calm until it got a whiff of weakness. In the back of their minds, their survival instincts kicked up an unholy racket shrieking to run away and not stop, just runrunrunrunwe'regonnadierunrun.
"Oh I was only offering for propriety's sake."
The man stared at them, face bored but eyes burning cold amethyst. Something cold and dark and full of fury, yet entirely impersonal in its rage. A force of nature. A singular hurricane that constrained by nothing but the force of his own will.
"Maten," He stated to the open air, ignoring the threatening men inches from.
The ruffians shot each other puzzled looks, what was the man talking about?
Then the air began to vibrate and thrum as enormous wing sails parted the air, fully extended to cause the most effect. A solid thunder of sound across eardrums.
A huge shadow fell on the road, blotting out the harsh rays of sunlight.
Massive downdrafts disrupted the sand, whipping up a small sandstorm.
And from a mighty gullet, a threatening roar reverberated across the flat plain.
A massive golden dragon settled to landed on the road behind her rider, teeth bared, tail coiled protectively around her precious human and wings widespread in a threat display. Her crest flared out, adding to the threat display as small flames licked around her jaws. She glowed yellow golden, as if the raw fury of the sun had descended from on high to punish them for their sins.
The men staggered backwards, panicked shouts rising from their throats. Even with the well known knowledge that dragons were genetically engineered to be incapable of harming humans, she was large and looming. Their minds skipped reason and went straight to panic.
"Calm down, CALM DOWN! Dragons don't harm humans!" The leader bellowed, trying to bring order to his pack again.
"Well that's mainly because no one's ever been dumb enough to threaten a rider." The unknown man quipped, letting out a deceptively casual exhale of smoke.
"That's a SUTRA!" Someone screamed and morale shattered to nothingness as the troupe scattered, fleeing to the dunes in terror.
Sure enough, upon closer inspection of the snarling gold dragon, there were indecipherable black runes in the language of the Ancients patterned across her hide and wings, marking her as the rarest and highest level of dragon.
Above even the valuable egg-lying queens, the golden SUTRA dragons were the biggest, most ferocious and most intelligent of the dragon colours. In some ways, they weren't even the same species. They were the top of the dragon hierarchy and their riders were just as privileged, traveling, advising or running Weyrs as they wished. They mostly remained neutral to the other dragons and Weyrs and dealt with diplomacy between the Holds, Weyrs and Craftsmen.
SUTRAs possessed greater than human intelligence and were in all appearances, biological supercomputers. They were the pinnacles of draconic evolution and the Ancient's genetic engineering. Sutras were thought to have been engineered after the initial dragons were created. A clever scientist called Kanzeon Bosatsu fiddled excessively with the genetics of five Gold eggs, these were the progenitors of the five Sutra lines. Each line had different Ancient markings that they passed down identically to their successor. No one knew what Kanzeon's purpose for doing so had been or how exactly she had managed it but the gold dragons that emerged from them were very different from their original brethren. It was thought that the Ancient runes that sutras were born carrying on their bodies were the instructions for the nearly impossible genetic engineering procedure.
The Sutras had extremely good memory for their species but their thought patterns were inherently alien and complicated because of their massive genetic memory, so their Riders had to be very carefully selected to be able to handle a mental link to something that powerful. They also had longer lives, which often extended to their riders.
And oddly enough, they lacked the general, genetically engineered non-violence dragons had towards humans. They didn't go snapping and snarling at people, in fact were very calm in temperament just like all other dragons, but if their riders were threatened they weren't above burning swaths of landscape and people to ash without an ounce of guilt. Their compassion and empathy were firmly fixed to their rider, unless they were very important to their rider, Sutras did not care much for other humans. A condition that traditional dragons also had.
They had incredible retention rate of firestone, their gullets could store the phosphorus for years until it was needed. The composition of the mineral also did not cause them to become infertile as their breeding cycle was much slower than a regular queen. They only laid one or two eggs that would become successor SUTRAs when they felt the time was right or if the draconic population was desperately low. Sometimes, rarely, the SUTRA would be male and the beginning brown gold would quickly turn deep bronze in its early weeks of life. However, once they were SUTRA class, no matter the colour, they would carry the black Ancient markings on their hide and wing membranes. It was just ridiculously harder to spot the markings on the male of the species.
Unlike their counterparts, they were decidedly less picky about the gender of the chosen rider. They judged potential riders on their will of spirit and mentality rather than their gender or age. That often caused the SUTRAs to hatch for older and more stable people rather than rash teenagers that the regular dragons preferred. Some assumed that that was why SUTRA's evolved to extend their rider's lives, since their riders usually started when they were older and hence would shorten the actual dragon's life.
No one knew exactly how the Sutras did it, but their riders had a good idea of how it worked. They had an incredibly strong telekinetic bond with what was essentially a biological supercomputer with all the Ancient's knowledge of genetic engineering. At some point, about two years after hatching when the dragon was fully fledged and knew what it was doing, the bond started to alter the rider's brain and from there, the biology. The Sutra would psychically encourage the cells to regenerate at much faster rates than normal, slowing down regular cellular decay and therefore the aging of their beloved riders.
The Riders all carried the title of Sanzo and a red bindi on their foreheads to mark their status. Each of the SUTRA bloodlines carried a title that the dragon used in public, only their riders and other SUTRAs knew their real name.
The leader snarled ineffectually and yelled again, trying to bring control. His attempts were thwarted when one of the remaining bandits got a good look at the blond rider and paled drastically.
"Shit! That's Genjo Sanzo!"
With that, any attempts at order dissolved and every single outlaw fled for their lives in a mad scramble of sand. A Sutra was bad enough, full of teeth and gold fire simmering beneath skin and fully capable of protecting their Rider with lethal force, but a Maten Rider was a whole different kettle of fish.
The youngest Sanzo of the Maten SUTRA bloodline was well known and well feared for his bloodthirsty extermination of criminals. As a Maten rider, he was above the law and had been tasked by the Heavenly Council with cleansing problems by whatever means necessary. The Heavenly Council, descendants of the genetic engineers that designed the dragons, a profession that already required loose morals, had very little moral qualms with the final judgement the Matens were fond of. That 'License to kill' so to speak, made people very nervous. Even worse, the newest Sanzo traveled with a pseudo-wing that all carried the same privilege. Even the pettiest thief knew and feared the dreaded Sanzo-ikkou.
With minds blank in panic, they staggered and slipped and crashed into each other as they fought to get away. Only to be met with the backtracking of the first deserters as a bronze came rushing at them from that direction, flying low. To their horror, in the blistering sunlight it was easy to see the nearly invisible black runic markings of a rare male SUTRA on the bronze.
"Capture the rider and the dragons won't attack!" The leader yelled, turning back to the rider still within grasp, mind already filling with greed as he imagined the uses of a captured gold dragon.
It was a sound tactical decision for humans who had never even considered human to rider combat. In theory, a rider was the weaker part of the dragonrider duo. And even better, a gold rider under threat would cause all other colours to defer and submit to protect their Queen.
They didn't bet on Sanzo.
Nobody ever expects Sanzo.
Someone who wasn't a 'weak' point in any definition of the term as he proved by shooting down two of his attackers in quick succession with pinpoint accuracy. He was a Sutra rider. Worse still, a Maten Rider, a Sutra line known to pick their riders for their no-nonsense practicality and casual ability to commit murder.
There was an indignant yell from above. "Don't you dare mess with Sanzo!" and the leader was promptly brained by a long red staff and a falling youth.
Almost instantly as the bronze rider rose with pride, having defended his pseudo-parental figure and guardian, he had to dance out of the way of irritated bullets.
"Baka-Saru!" Sanzo scowled. "I was saving a bullet for that asshole!"
"But Saaaaaaaanzo!"
The blond rider just ignored him and shot the irritating leader as his itchy trigger finger had been twitching to do since he opened his mouth.
The large bronze landed messily opposite Maten, scrambling and kicking up dust with his claws almost comically but no less threatening. He rose to his full and very impressive size, odd gold of his crest giving him the impression of a crown of royalty. Despite his regal and powerful form, he still sheepishly dipped his head at his mother in a deferential greeting. The gold only spared him a brief glance and chirp before going back to keeping a fierce eye on the men who had threatened her rider.
Maten's descent into motherhood had been three-quarters near death experience and one-quarter accident. It was a culmination of a truly horrendous week in the field that left Sanzo's predecessor near death and Sanzo himself very near there. The threadfall that week had been brutal, the silver parasitic strands had gotten caught up in storm winds that made their fall very dangerous and unpredictable. Several other dragons had been heavily injured, if not outright killed, when sudden updrafts carried thread to hit their underbellies.
Koumyou and his dragon had been caught in a massive updraft of thread out of nowhere barely minutes after they realized the danger and he had begun yelling for a retreat. Ignoring the danger to themselves, the younger Sutra pair had tackled their elders between to return to the Weyr. Neither of them were paying attention to thread at that point and they accidently clipped a clump in their rush. Kouryuu had been mostly unharmed but Sanzo got the brunt of it.
Chang'an Weyr had been distraught as Koumyou had continued to weaken, even as Sanzo stubbornly clung to life. Koumyou's Houmei (A/N: like Kouryuu was Genjou's original name before becoming a Sanzo, Houmei was Koumyou's) had started to gray under his bandages, the colour of a dragon with a rider near death. Nobody knew quite what set it off, though to this day Saizo was sure it was a combination of Goku wandering into telepathic range of the Weyr and pinging as a potential Sutra Rider and the critical condition of the Maten line of Sutra dragons. Kouryuu, Genjou's Maten Sutra had grimly prepared to fly to mate. It would've been easier if Houmei had done it, since she had flown before and had a bronze that she could tolerate. But with Koumyou's condition slipping, she was in no shape to feed herself, much less attempt a lengthy mating flight, even one with an already chosen suitor. Kouryuu's first flight was the stuff of legends whispered in the corridors of the Weyr.
Even with her hide graying and her rider nearly delirious with pain, she blooded her kills and took to the sky. Though traditional Gold Riders must take the winning male dragon's rider to bed, Sutras didn't often follow that practice. As they basically were asexual for most of their lives, the few times they rose to mate the passions never ran high enough to affect the rider that badly.
That didn't usually stop the bronze riders, high on backwash from their dragon, from trying to sleep with them though.
After Genjou, delirious and covered in bandages, supposedly tranquilized with numbweed, shot the first bronze rider that approached, the healers unanimously sealed down the infirmary and firmly encouraged the bronze riders to go seek relief elsewhere. The man wasn't even aware of his actions or what was going on around him but he had unerringly snatched up his revolver from his bloody sleeve to put a bullet in the man's shoulder. The raw, feral part of him, connected directly to what was, in essence, a biological alien supercomputer was hissing at the gall of the lesser species. How dare they try and lay a hand on his/her/their weakened body!
It was a glorious tale, and a grave humiliation. Not a single male dragon in Chang'an, or even in neighboring Weyrs that joined the race, could catch her. She flew ridiculously high, higher than any dragon would ever dare with a rider. The air grew thin and clouds fell away far beneath their wings. The mobs of remaining bronzes struggled to follow, the smaller colours dropping out as their endurance failed. She laughed at their arrogance and slowness and stupidity. She was of superior stock and bioengineering, but that did not make SUTRAs uncatchable. But none could outwit her, so none could catch her. No one could tame the mighty golden beast.
For she was too much like her rider for all that they were different species. They were quick-tempered, quick-witted and refused to be chained.
They would go their own way.
So f**k biologic necessity.
And one by one every male competitor fell to ground.
And spiraling up, up in the sky he/her/them smiled a bloody grin full of razor teeth.
The air grew thin and the sky grew darker. And at the top of the world, she soaked in the direct sunlight, collecting UV rays for her final biological process that would allow the continuation of the Maten line even if the males were unworthy. It was less of a cloning and more of a meddling with the spare genetics inherited from her own father, a heretic bronze sutra from the Muten line. The result, was within a week and a half, Kouryu laid a single egg at the top of the temple in the holy Sutra nest without any need for a father.
Sanzo had a very unpleasant awakening that caused a small rush of minor bullet-wound patients to the infirmary. He remembered a cluster of thread hitting him and then lots of pain. And when he finally achieved full coherency, it was to hear that his dragon, HIS dragon had been pregnant and now had a kid. A lot of stressed smoking occurred that day. A few weeks later, she went and snatched the vagabond Goku off the road to dump before her egg and that, as they say, is history.
More wind heralded the arrival of two other dragons and their riders from opposite directions, neatly boxing in the attempted bandits. Their riders quickly dismounted to make sure that Sanzo was alright. The longhaired redhead hung back, casting a discrete eye up and down the Sutra rider to make sure nothing had happened. After the quick glance to reassure himself that the man was fine, he dismissed him and turned to needle the short bronze rider. His dragon was a broad chested and large blue with overlarge wings and an exceedingly long whip like tail.
The brunet on the other hand rushed forward quickly, Healer's bag bouncing at his side. He had the distinction of being the sole human that Sanzo would allow to fuss and tend to him, even if it was a near thing. His dragon was a small brown that appeared nearly bleached white under trauma. The rare condition was usually only found in fatally injured dragons, where the colour of their hide faded to gray before death. The man was an easily recognizable figure, nearly as feared as the heaven-and-hell Sanzo. The white gray dragon was a solid give-away.
He was the renowned mass-murderer Cho Gonou and his oath breaker dragon Tenpou. Somewhere during Gonou's legendary psychotic break and subsequent massacre of an entire hold for murdering his wife and subsequently her dragon, something also broke within his dragon. The originally passive and mild-mannered dragon was the first common-born dragon (meaning not a SUTRA) to ever ignore the genetically designed passivity and join in the massacre of the people who had robbed the duo of their mates.
All rumours said that Cho Gonou had been sentenced and executed though.
The appearance of this man made the bandits both very confused and very terrified.
His appearance fit the rumours but his entire demeanor screamer healer instead of killer and the other riders called both him and his dragon by a different name.
The dragon had sharper and more streamlined features than usual for a brown, giving him a very feline and feral appearance, though his personality seemed similar to his rider. Passive, calming and a creepily smiling aura of 'who, me? I couldn't hurt a fly'. No matter how comforting that was to the other three sides of bared teeth and growls, it was all the more frightening for it. He had a large chest cavity which indicated that it had large lungs and more stamina than its build gave credit for. It also made him appear much larger when politely looming over people.
"I'm fine Hakkai." Sanzo said gruffly, but grudgingly unfolding his arms to allow the healer to inspect him and to show that there wasn't even a spot of blood on his white robes.
"Get Hakuryu and Kenren to stop hovering over us." Sanzo snapped. "At least Taisei knows better!"
The brown and blue were worriedly looming over Maten instead of keeping track of the captives. Taisei, knowing better and in wise fear of his mother kept his gaze firmly on the bandits, making sure to snarl every now and then for proper effect. Predictably, the short tempered Sanzo and his dragon took exception to the needless worrying and lashed out. Maten slapped both dragons upside the head with her wings and went back to pointedly ignoring them. Sanzo substituted with smacking them all with his folded paper fan.
"Gather them up," He snapped. "We have to take them to the Sanbutsushin in one piece."
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A/N: I used a naming scheme that was a combo of their past lives and their titles/pets/original names. I nearly gave Hakkai a green to match his colours but that didn't really seem like a good fit, I don't know why. He seemed more like a reliable brown anyway. Gyojo got a matching blue. Goku just had to get a bronze, it's the biggest and baddest male dragon and the highest male in the colour hierarchy. Sanzo's a gold because he just is, undisputed top of the hierarchy, commands other dragons, does whatever he wants, doesn't take orders. I'm guessing Kougaiji and Dokugaji would be a bronze and brown respectively though Kougaiji is powerful and top dog enough to fit a gold. Originally I meant to give Hakkai a dragon called 'Tenpou' to match Gyojo's 'Kenren' and have Goujun and Hakuryu be another pair but that got too confusing so I used Tenpou as his original name and accidently made Hakuryu a mass murder instead. Oops.
Also I never said if Koumyou survived the threadfall accident. Honestly, I don't even know. XP
It really could go either way, and I'm not planning to write more on this verse so I think I'll just leave the answer up in the air.
Honestly, the idea of Sanzo letting anyone overpower him, even when high on dragon pheromones, is frankly laughable. This is a man who canonically headshots people who sexually harass him. (This man is my hero) I have him headcannoned as all but asexual.
I don't know if McCaffery ever said that the mating pair's riders HAVE to sleep together but I always thought that was rubbish. If being high on pheromones causes them to wanna get laid/go into heat, I always thought that they could go sleep with people they're actually in a relationship with or better yet, barricade themselves away from people. I mean, it works for dogs. She also never said if it was bad if the queen doesn't get caught, like if they'd go into a frenzy and go between and die or something. However, biologically, that's pretty dumb. So I'm assuming it doesn't affect the female that much if they don't get caught. I figure it'd be pretty frowned upon though since the Weyrs always want more eggs.
I doubt the greens would be able to outfly any suitors since it has the worst stamina of the colours. The only way it could outfly suitors would be if it was really clever and that's not something greens are really known for. And no matter how smart their rider is, I doubt they could offer tactical advice when doped on dragon pheromones. Plus, I figure, the female dragons want to be caught despite what their riders want. That's basic biology, it would make sense that they'd want to reproduce. It's just incredibly mentally scarring that the humans who share brainspace with them get dragged along.
Now, I assume it would take a reaaaaaally strong-willed/vindictive rider to prevent nature taking over and just choosing the least offensive male. Cause it's a different story if both the dragon AND the rider doesn't want to be caught. Sutras are large, fast, have ridiculous stamina and most importantly, are highly intelligent without their riders. And because of that intelligence, they are not run on animal instinct. They're quite like humans in that way. If they really want to, they can ignore the effects of biology telling them to get laid. It's a massive F** you to the rest of the sexist dragon rider community. And that is basically Sanzo to a T. And since I conveniently created a new tier of dragon, Kouryuu decided 'bugger that' and asexually reproduced before I could decide anything about how Taisei happened. Bless that dragon. She's a vindictive bugger after my own heart.