Hello again! Today we've got tons and tons of first flights. Also, Cardin continues to have a really bad week, which I think is something we can all enjoy...

19. Dragonback

Two broken ribs. It could have been worse.

Ozpin shut the door to Cardin's room in the infirmary behind him and stood there for a moment, his mouth set in a grim line. None of the boy's teammates had come to visit him. No one had brought flowers or cards.

He cleared his throat. Cardin stirred, his eyes fluttering open.

"I hear you've been healing well."

"Yeah." Cardin tried to sit up and winced. "Did you catch that psycho dragon yet?"

"We've had no success in locating Mudslide."

"Why the fuck are you here, then?"

Ozpin lay a hand on the metal rail on the side of the bed, tapping it a few times with his forefinger. "I've made many mistakes in my life," he said softly. "Few have been as disastrous or morally compromising as allowing you to tarnish this institution for so long."

Cardin scoffed. "Look, old man. One of those monsters just attacked me, so if you want to still have a school by the end of—"

"I remember our previous discussion." Ozpin's hand tightened on the rail. "You threatened to go to the Council and put fellow students and their dragons at their mercy."

"Yeah." Cardin smirked. "You're covering for the useless rejects. And that's, what, half the first year dragons?"

"Not as many as that." Quite a few more.

"So how about you go find the stinking lizard that broke my ribs," Cardin suggested, "and maybe if you're quick about it I won't bother explaining all that to the Council."

"It's rather late for that." Ozpin leaned forward, bracing his weight on the rail. "I don't suppose you ever paused to consider that what you're threatening to do would create a small army of rogue riders." He sighed. "I don't know how much longer they'll be able to remain at this institution... but I do know that when the Council comes for them, a great many of them will be furious. They will look for someone to blame."

He straightened up, adjusted his glasses. "It would be very unwise to paint a target on your back. Don't you think?"

Cardin gaped at him. "You—"

"Wouldn't do that." Ozpin smiled sadly. "Not if I could possibly avoid it, no. But tell me, Mister Winchester. In the situation you've created, where I must harm someone... how many reasons have you given me to protect you over the dozens of innocent dragons that are in my care?"

The boy's mouth opened and closed a few times. Then he spluttered, "They're just animals!"

"Thank you, Mister Winchester, for making this easier than it might have been."

Glynda was already in his office. He nodded to her as he entered, then sat down heavily behind his desk, massaging the bridge of his nose. Ragnar stirred from where he was sleeping in the back of the room.

"Qrow wants to speak with you," Glynda told him. "He says he found his sister."

Ozpin took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I doubt I'll be able to act on that information until this most recent storm has passed."

"Warning the students should be our top priority."

"Indeed. Let's start with the largest group, shall we?"

Glynda nodded and left the room. Ozpin waited several minutes before his office door opened. He tried to smile, but knew it would look false and dropped it.

He'd only called for those whose dragons were in danger, but all three teams arrived together—RWBY, JNPR, and SSSN. Ozpin gestured for them to enter, despite the fact that it made his office rather cramped.

"Thank you all for coming."

"Something's happening with the council," Blake said.

"I had planned to get around to the subject more gently, but... yes. The debacle with Mister Winchester yesterday has put us in a much more precarious situation."

"How precarious, exactly?" asked Pyrrha.

"That remains to be seen." Ozpin folded his hands atop the desk and looked at each student in turn. "I want you to know that your professors and I will do everything in our power to protect you. Mister Winchester's family is suing Beacon Dragonry, but that only endangers Mudslide, who has fled the premises."

He allowed himself a small smile in Ruby's direction. Then it faded, as he took a deep breath and continued. "With that said... those of you whose dragons are in danger should keep a bag packed. I'll warn you if you need to run."

The students exchanged anxious glances.

"That is all." They filed out, and he caught a snatch of frantic conversation just before the office door closed. Glynda opened it a second later and looked at him expectantly.

"Call for Miss Laurel and Mister Olive, please."

This was going to be a very long day.

Their riders were slow.

Titan bounded ahead of Pyrrha, barking excitedly. She smiled—though it was a little shaky at the corners. A few feet away, Ao Guang ran frantic circles around Ren. Freya, who had done this already, walked sedately beside Nora, who was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. At the back, with Jaune's hand resting on her neck, was Twiggy.

He felt a little twinge looking at them. Was it wrong to be so excited when his sister wouldn't get to fly with them?

Pyrrha caught up with him and patted him lightly on the shoulder. Her shoulders were tense. Titan ran faster, goading her into a race. Her smile got a little less forced, and the guilt lessened. One thing at a time—first, he had to cheer up his rider.

They were some of the first to reach the practice field. All four of their professors were present—there were even a few older dragons watching with their riders. Titan waited impatiently as Pyrrha finished fastening and double-checking his tack.

Several feet away, Huo accidentally set a patch of grass on fire and had to sit on it to put it out. Zircon was trying to hide his face in Sage's shirt, which didn't really work now that his head was bigger than his rider's torso. To Titan's surprise, Pit was waiting with the rest of them, no weights in sight.

"You're flying with Blake?" Twiggy asked, her tail curling around her feet.

Pit nodded. "It's only a little ahead of schedule for me, so the professors decided to let me try."

She wilted a little, then trotted back to Jaune to let him tie on the sandbags. Titan butted his head against her shoulder as she passed. "You'll get there," he promised.

"Alright!" Doctor Oobleck cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted over the excited chatter. "I'd like you all to line up—fire dragons here, earth dragons over there..."

Pyrrha jogged to keep up with Titan as he rushed over to the ramp. She was starting to catch some of the excitement in the air, though she kept casting worried glances over her shoulder at Jaune and Twiggy.

The wind dragons had a shorter ramp than the rest of them. Titan stared at it, his head tilted slightly to the side. Pyrrha noticed him looking. "They're starting to learn other takeoff methods," she explained. "Ruby tells me they're working up to getting in the air with a running start, but no ramp. Titan felt tired just thinking about it.

He and Pyrrha waited behind Fang and Huo. Bored, the two soon started blowing smoke at one another. Titan couldn't join in, so he sat as patiently as he could as Professor Port walked up and down the line, checking all of their tack.

"Don't want any of you falling off, now do we?" he said, and chortled. "Though Pepper and I wouldn't mind the exercise!"

Finally, the professors stepped back. In the front of the line, Fang flared his wings and shot a last smug glance over his shoulder at Huo. Then he was off. He charged up the ramp, the muscles in his chest and legs bunching and releasing, his neck straining out towards the sky. He leaped into the air... and veered off to the left, flapping heavily and letting out a frustrated squawk. Huo laughed at him, but didn't fare much better when he tried a moment later.

Titan was next. He started to run, already thinking he would probably have a few false starts, too. Then he shot a glance over his shoulder to see Pyrrha clinging to the saddle, a slight furrow in her brow.

If the open sky didn't chase the worry off her face, nothing would.

He sped up, digging his claws into the earthen ramp. Then he managed to angle his wings just so, and felt the wind start to lift him off the ground. His front paws hit open air. He pushed off with his back legs, and both wings scooped at the air. There was a perfect, frozen instant where he recognized the feeling from flying with the weights, and knew.

Pyrrha's cry of delight was snatched by the wind. Titan dipped one wing and wheeled around, passing over the rest of the line as he circled upward. Within moments he was breathing hard, his chest aching with the effort. He held his wings out wide and let himself drift.

His rider scratched at the base of his neck. He craned his neck to look—and all of a sudden he veered hard to one side. The air went out from under his wings, and he started to spiral towards the ground. Titan managed to turn his descent into a steep glide just before he hit the ground at a run, tearing up tufts of grass and coming to a stop in the middle of the field.

Pyrrha slid from the saddle and hugged him around the neck.

"Sorry," she said, smiling. "I distracted you."

He let out a reassuring rumble and said, "Gud." After all, he'd just learned a very useful lesson—it was hard to move your head and fly at the same time. He'd never cared to look at the sandbags while he was in the air.

On his way back to the line, he stopped to greet Twiggy. She was still struggling with the sandbags. Her head was hanging low, her tail drooping.

"I feel like everyone's staring," she said, her ears flicking back.

"They're not," Titan promised. "They're too busy watching that." He pointed his snout towards the fire line, where Huo and Titan were flaring their wings at each other and competing to see who could keep a fire burning in his mouth the longest.

Twiggy's tail curled slightly upward. "I guess so."

"No one's going to tease you about it," Titan promised. Not while Cardin was in the hospital, anyway—at least something good had come of all that.

"Yeah... I think that's a losing battle, dude."

Neptune froze in the act of smoothing his windblown hair back into something like order. Sun was standing a few feet to his right, leaning on Huo's shoulder.

"Right!" He gave it a last, desperate pat and then dropped his hand to his side. "How's it, uh..." Neptune gestured at Huo. He could feel Nymph giving him one of those looks again.

"Pretty great." Sun smirked at his dragon. "Still no takeoff yet, but he set the grass on fire a few times."

That sounded like the exact opposite of great, but Neptune just grinned and said, "Yeah!"

Behind him, someone coughed politely. He turned around and saw Ren and Ao Guang. Then turned the other way and realized he was next.

"Whoops, sorry!" Sun backed up. "Good luck!"

"Thanks!" Neptune saluted from the saddle as Nymph picked up speed on the way to the ramp. Their last jump had ended in a glide, but he felt his heart in his throat just the same.

Then she jumped, and he forgot how to breathe. The ground fell away. The wind whipped his hair back into a tangled mess. He came back to himself enough to whoop with delight, and far below he heard Huo's indignant roar. Nymph flapped twice, then eased into a glide, circling around the edge of the field.

The sky was getting crowded. He sat up in the saddle to wave as Pyrrha passed overhead, then again when Nymph and Specter flew for a few seconds wingtip to wingtip. About half of the wind riders had managed to take off despite the low ramp, and many of them were playing what looked like a very dangerous aerial version of tag.

Neptune leaned a little to the left and looked out past his foot—buckled securely into the saddle—to the field far below. The distance made him a little bit dizzy, but that was as much excitement as fear. Caught up in the adrenaline, he even shot a cheeky wave at Sun and Huo, who were still earthbound.

Apparently, that was all the motivation Huo needed. Neptune watched from above as he bounded up the ramp and tore into the air, flapping frantically. For a moment he wobbled in the air and it looked like he was about to fall. Then he stopped flapping and stabilized. He shrieked in triumph and veered off towards Nymph.

"I may have miscalculated," Neptune said, grinning.

Nymph didn't turn around, but she gave her head a light toss as if to say, 'Please. I've got this.'

"Hey!" Sun waved both arms above his head, ignoring the reins completely. Neptune waved back. It didn't look like Huo was planning on turning—until, at the last second, he veered sharply sideways so that Sun was sitting perpendicular to the ground. His yelp was loud enough for Neptune to hear over the wind.

Afterwards Huo circled back around, giving Nymph a smug look. Neptune exchanged a brief glance with Sun. Then the ground pitched and spun nauseatingly around him. He clung to the saddle, his surprised shout turning into a laugh as his dragon righted herself and took her own victory lap around Huo.

"A barrel roll?" he shouted. "Really?"

Sun looked from Nymph, to Huo, then back again. He cupped both hands around his mouth. "Tell them I died we—ah!"

Neptune grinned as he watched Huo try the same maneuver—twice, in the spirit of one-upping Nymph. Sun came out the other side with his shirt blown up over his head, trying fruitlessly to untangle himself with one hand while the other gripped the saddle.

Nymph responded with some complicated motion—Neptune honestly had no idea what it would have looked like from an outside perspective. From his it mostly just felt like he'd been stuck in a hamster ball and rolled down a set of invisible stairs around eight hundred feet in the air.

He emerged triumphant, if slightly nauseous, and extended a hand to Sun. Your turn.

As Huo took up the challenge, Neptune happened to glance down at the ground and marveled for a moment at the sight of Beacon's campus laid out underneath them like a fuzzy green map. Almost all of his nerves had evaporated—even in the middle of a stunt, all he had to do was look at Nymph and he knew it would be fine. It was... weird. Good, but very weird.

Then again, he didn't have an irrational fear of heights.

Whump.

Pit dragged himself out of the small furrow he'd made in the ground, his tail flicking irritably back and forth. He shook out his wings to try and get rid of some of the soreness. It didn't work.

He started towards the ramp again, but stopped when he felt Blake tap his shoulder. When he craned his neck around to see, she reached out and stroked his nose. "I think it's time for a break."

Pit glared at her reproachfully.

"Don't look at me like that! You might pull something, remember?"

Blake folded her arms and met him stare for stare. He looked away first, huffing and ambling over towards where Twiggy was sitting next to Titan. They greeted him warmly, though Twiggy looked a little wilted.

"Any luck?" she asked.

Pit flopped onto his belly and put his chin down on his paws. "No."

A buckle came loose on his saddle. He reared his head indignantly, only for Blake to pat him gently on the nose.

"Relax," she said. "There's plenty of time left. You can rest for a few minutes, and then we'll try again. Sound good?"

He grumbled a reluctant agreement and helped her down, letting her cling to his neck so that she didn't put too much weight on her leg. The crutches were gone now, which was nice, but she still limped when she walked.

Can't walk, can't fly.

Pit shook his head and plopped it down on his paws again, a little harder than was probably wise. Titan shot him a concerned look. "Are you alright?"

"Tired." He glanced up and picked out his friends from the tiny specks wheeling about overhead. Specter was easy to find—he was circling low over the field, and whistled a greeting as he passed overhead. Pit narrowed his eyes. The ice dragon had been completely insufferable in flying lessons for the past few days. Just because his rider was so tiny...

Blake patted the top of his head. He glanced back and noticed that she was arching an eyebrow at him, as if she'd read his mind.

"It's not a competition," she said quietly. Glanced up. "For anyone but Huo and Fang, anyway."

Pit tried to take the words to heart and relax, but the longer he sat still the more restless he got. He pushed himself back to his feet, and Blake stood up with him. "Are you sure?" He nodded. She grabbed onto his neck and let him swing her up and over the saddle, where she could adjust her leg before buckling herself in. While she was fiddling with the straps, he nodded goodbye to Twiggy and Titan and returned to the ramp.

As much as it had annoyed him to stop, he did feel better as he started his next run. The ramp melted away under his paws. Finally he launched himself into open air and flapped hard. Already he had reached the peak of his jump and was starting to lose altitude. He pushed himself, ignoring the burning in his wings and chest, trying not to think about how easy it could be.

He was so heavy... but he couldn't scare Blake. So he let himself dip into a glide and landed with another hefty thump, his tail lashing with frustration.

Zircon took off for the first time. Twiggy had already made several laps around the field with her heap of sandbags. The wait for the ramp dwindled until everyone was either in the air or sitting on the side of the field, resting after their first flight. Blake forced him to take another break.

Finally, he heard Doctor Oobleck call out, "Fifteen minutes, everyone!"

Blake rested a hand on his neck, as if to say that it was alright. He didn't need to fly today. Pit tossed his head and charged the ramp. Of course he needed to fly today—he needed to fly now. When the world kept getting scarier by the day, when his rider couldn't run without his help, when all he wanted to do sometimes was to scoop her up and hide somewhere in the mountains where they'd finally be safe... he needed to be able to fly.

Pit jumped off the top of the ramp, and for a moment he imagined the red-haired man was there. He clawed his way skyward, angling his wings so that he was moving with the wind... and finally watched the ground fall away.

He'd been so focused, he was startled when he heard a laugh from behind him. Barely resisting the urge to turn and look—Titan had warned him not to do that—he managed an exhausted bark and spiraled into a glide.

Some of the frustration came back, at that—how was he supposed to get away from someone who wanted to hurt them if he could only fly for a few seconds? But then he landed and Blake hugged him around the neck, and he relaxed. He would get better—they had flying lessons again tomorrow.

That night, Pyrrha found Jaune on the roof.

He was slumped slightly to one side, staring sightlessly across campus. One hand propped his head up, smushing his cheek. He looked up as she passed in front of him and mustered a small smile.

"Hey."

She sat down next to him, close enough that she could bump her knee lightly against his. "What are you looking at?"

Jaune shrugged and went back to staring off into space. "Nothing, really. I think my eyes were pointed at the woods."

"Right..."

For a while everything was quiet, except for the distant chattering of insects. Pyrrha stole a glance in his direction. His eyebrows had drawn together, and she imagined he was looking towards the field where everyone else had learned to fly that afternoon.

Titan could carry him.

Would it help if she offered? Or would that just make everything worse? Surely he would ask if he felt like that would—no. No, he definitely wouldn't. Would she want to, in his place? Pyrrha opened her mouth to say something, anything.

Jaune spoke before she had the chance. "I don't mind waiting. I really don't."

"That's... good," Pyrrha said. "Though I can't help but feel like you're working towards a 'but' here."

He mustered a shaky grin. "You got me."

She pressed their shoulders together and waited.

It took a moment, and a few hard swallows, before he spoke again. "You remember what Ozpin told us. I don't mind waiting when it's like this, but... I keep thinking, you know, what if something goes wrong? What if we have to run, and we can't get away? What if—"

He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry. I didn't mean to unload on you like that."

Pyrrha gave his hand a squeeze. "You don't have to apologize. And... I truly believe things will turn out alright. Twiggy is so close to your weight now, and people and dragons can always do more in a crisis. She'd be able to carry you to save your life."

Jaune tipped his head to the side, leaning it against her shoulder. "...Thanks. That really helps."

"I'm glad."

They sat like that a long time, hand in hand, watching the stars and talking about anything and everything except the future.