Happy Tuesday, everyone! This chapter, a fuss is made over a little boulder.

49. The Ones Who Stay

Shouting woke Ilia in the dead of night.

She stumbled out of her tent, still tangled in her sleeping bag and wondering where the hell she was. Justice helped with the sleeping bag—he let her lean on him while she kicked it back into her tent—and a few seconds of confused blinking settled the rest. They were in the camp. She and Justice had gotten back from their mission the night before.

That still didn't explain the shouting... but the fact that it was coming from the lab gave her an idea of what was going on. She sprinted over, Justice hot on her heels, and was about to make him wait outside when Sienna poked her head out. "Bring him. It's about time he saw it, anyway."

Ilia wanted to disagree—the middle of a hatching felt like a bad time to do this. And yet... she'd been meaning to tell him for a while now. She couldn't put it off forever.

Some of it she'd already explained, like the basics about why the White Fang had formed and what they wanted to do. This, though... she hadn't been ready, hadn't planned what to say. So she started somewhere. "You already know that we need your help to stop the humans that run everything."

Justice bobbed his head.

"Well... the problem is that they have dragons too. A lot of them. More than we ever will. So... we also need an edge that they don't have."

"'Arr-inn-grr."

The name was almost too mangled for her to recognize it, but with context Ilia could nod and say, "Yes, like Harbinger. Hybrids like him haven't existed for a long time, because the humans don't want them to. We're trying to bring them back."

"Gud!"

"...Yeah." Ilia glanced at the lab. "But it's hard. We don't know how they used to be made. We're doing our best to figure it out, but sometimes... sometimes we get things wrong, and the hatchlings don't survive."

Justice's ears went back, and he let out a low whine.

"I know." Ilia reached out, and he pressed his nose against her hands. "I hate it too. But it's the only way."

She watched him ponder that. Then, finally, he nodded. "Ffight. Nno 'oo-manzz, no..." He jabbed his tail towards the lab.

"Exactly." Ilia smiled at him until she remembered that they were about to go inside. "It's going to smell bad in there, but... just remember what I told you." She placed a hand on his neck to soothe him, and pushed past the flap.

Inside, Ilia did a double-take. There was a small ring of technicians, Sienna, and the Lieutenant, all gathered around an egg. She didn't understand why, at first. They didn't shout for eggs—not when so many of the dragonets that hatched from them didn't live more than a few minutes.

Except this egg was a deep indigo, scattered with flecks of pink and gold. Ilia remembered the injection Sienna had mentioned to her, the one they made based off something Cinder told them should work and a hybrid type that had been successful in Pit. It had enough of a chance to be worth the early warning.

Justice paced around the lab for a minute, rearing in an agitation. For a minute she thought she'd have to lead him back to their tent. Then Harbinger walked in, flanked by Fennec and Corsac, and bounded over to him. Soon the two of them were sniffing at the egg and barking in excitement. Ilia wondered if they could smell the difference between a healthy hatchling and a sick one.

A crack split the air. Harbinger yelped and yanked his head back. Ilia remembered his first encounter with Sienna's hybrid and had to fight down a smile. Justice pressed his face closer. She was about to tell him to be careful, in case he knocked it over, when there was another sharp sound. This time the shell broke.

Ilia moved forward, her breath caught in her throat. A brick of a snout emerged from within the egg. Violet eyes blinked open. The hatchling... Ilia thought it might have cheeped, but the sound was so much deeper than she'd expected that she jumped. It sounded a bit like a bullfrog.

Sienna elbowed the Lieutenant. He moved forward to cradle the egg in his massive hands. Corsac and Fennec leaned over his shoulders, so only Ilia caught the wistful look on Sienna's face.

It didn't take long for the dragonet to wriggle free of its prison. The rest of its body turned out to be as blunt as its head, but it was pretty in its own blocky way. Its scales were the same midnight blue as the egg, with specks of pink and gold that made it look like someone had scattered stardust across its back. Thick armored scales ran down its spine, all the way to the tip of its stubby tail. Its wings fluttered, scattering drops of egg goo on the floor. They were small. So small that they were practically vestigial. Ilia's heart sank.

"Is it—" the Lieutenant started to say. The dragonet croaked again and licked his fingers. It seemed fascinated by his mask, and pawed at it without seeming to care about its likeness to the creatures of Grimm. And Ilia watched, dumbstruck, as the big man trailed off. He drew it closer to his chest. It grabbed onto his shirt and made a noise like a twanging rubber band. "It's..." His hand shook as he stroked its back, ruffling the tiny wings.

"Will it fly?" Corsac asked, reaching out to grab one of its wings. The Lieutenant knocked him away. When his hatchling stiffened in alarm, he murmured in its ear to soothe it. Ilia was thrown all over again. Trying to associate the giant with these gestures of affection was jamming something in her brain. Are we sure it's still him under that mask?

"He will fly," he said, rising to his full height. The dragonet grunted in surprise. Then, once it found its balance on his shoulder, it pawed at his ear in delight and craned its neck to look around. "All dragons do."

"It might be damaged."

Ilia saw the Lieutenant's shoulders stiffen. She didn't normally like him much, but... "We don't know what a healthy gravity dragon looks like," she pointed out. "Pit was stockier than the other earth dragons, and he had only a little gravity dust in him."

"Even if it doesn't fly, we don't exactly have the luxury of being picky," added Sienna. "It's big for a hatchling, and if the deserter's hybrid is any indication, it's only going to get bigger. We can use that kind of firepower, flight or no."

Reluctantly, Corsac nodded agreement.

The Lieutenant still had eyes only for the dragonet. It gave his earlobe a gentle tug and twanged insistently.

"Hungry, little one?" Without turning his head he asked, "Where is the food?"

Sienna handed him a jar of peaches. He looked down at it, shrugged, and popped the top. At the smell of the fruit, his dragonet started to bark. Ilia jumped again. It sounded more like a baying bloodhound than a baby dragon.

A few minutes later, the jar was empty. "They are greedy things," the Lieutenant said, looking bemused.

Sienna snorted. "It didn't savage you once. Don't complain." As her amusement faded, Ilia caught another flash of hurt. She'd loved her own dragonet, as vicious as it had been.

The next one, Ilia thought. The next one will be hers, and it won't abandon her.

The Lieutenant raised his arm. His hatchling perched on his wrist, wiggling its thick tail for balance and making more croaking sounds. "I will call him Gigas," he decided.

Gigas fluttered his stunted wings and sang out like a foghorn.

"You're bigger."

She arched her back and hissed. Justice was in the woods again and talking like no time had passed. Like he hadn't disappeared.

"Liar."

His eyes tried to track her as she paced in and out of the deep shadows of the forest. She slipped through a few bushes. As he spun around, squinting, his neck craning this way and that, she struck. Claws raked over his shoulder.

She was bigger. He didn't seem so towering anymore.

"Ouch!" Justice reared up on his hind legs, but before he could retaliate she slipped back into the trees. He sniffed the air. "Hey! I'm sorry, okay? I was gone on an important mission with my rider. I told you I'd come back to visit you, and I'm here now."

She darted out and sank her teeth into the tip of his tail. By the time he'd whipped around to look, she had already vanished again. His wings fluttered uneasily. "You're getting good at that."

More monsters had followed the first. She didn't like to send them to Brand anymore—not after the time he was asleep when they got to the camp, and a wolf creature grabbed one of the faunus' arms in its jaws. He survived, but it was too close. Too random. Instead, she learned how to fight them herself. She would slip out of the shadows and blind them, rake her claws across the backs of their knees or the napes of their necks, cutting weak places until they fell to the ground and couldn't move anymore.

They could not speak. She tried to forget that she had been lonely enough to try.

She made her own distractions. With so many Grimm in the forest, it was easy for her to fool the sentries into thinking she was one. She snapped twigs and breathed with menacing purpose, fraying their nerves until they sprinted back into the camp to send up the alarm. This was not enough for her to target the evil place, but she found other ways to slow them down. Their tents could be set on fire—all it took was dry leaves and dry air and a spark in the wrong place. Their equipment could be stolen. She buried tools, knives, and even guns in the forest.

It had only been a week or so, but Justice seemed clumsier. She flared her wings to propel herself into the trees. His head followed the noise, but she could move quickly and silently among the branches, and he soon lost her again.

"Come out," he said, snorting smoke. "I can talk to you like I promised."

She wanted to bite him again. For an instant she crouched, poised... but she was tempted. "Talk."

Justice turned towards her voice, but she squirmed away and hid somewhere else. He sat staring at empty air. "Fine," he huffed. "I'll talk. But you have to sit down, too. So we can look at each other."

Again, there was the urge to snap. But she hopped down from a low branch and landed directly behind him. He whirled around.

"Good."

She bared her teeth at him.

"No one else is missing."

They weren't. It was easier not to hurt them now that she was better at hiding.

Justice pawed the ground. "Hatchling?"

She wasn't a hatchling anymore.

Finally he settled on his haunches, and he talked. The aimless, rambling talk of before, about people and places she'd never seen, or about the faunus in the camp. She relaxed despite herself. The horrible craving still gripped her—the last talk with him hadn't satisfied it either—but the ache eased.

And of course, he had to ruin it. "I saw inside the lab."

Her ears went back. She watched him warily, sure that it wasn't true. He wasn't angry enough.

"Ilia explained everything. It's not their fault, but they need our help. Your help. You and Harbinger are special, and without you the humans would just—"

"Lie."

Justice reared his head. "It's not a lie. Do you think you're making things better when you take things? You're just making it all harder when we should be helping them! The sooner we make the humans stop, the sooner the lab will go away."

She stared at him. The earnest perk of his ears, the anxious twitching in his tail, the wide and trusting eyes... "Stupid," she spat.

He bristled. "I'm not stupid. I could smell what happened in there just like you could, but without that lab you wouldn't even be here!" He said it like she was a good thing they'd done.

"Kill many. One life. Bad."

"Things are getting better. The egg today was—" and he stopped, his eyes huge. She stared back at him. Then Justice turned on his heel and fled.

She caught up to him and pinned his tail beneath her claws. "Where?"

"No!" He pulled away from her. "You have to go away now. I shouldn't have said that."

"Not dead." He wouldn't have mentioned it if it were. "Where?"

Justice ran away instead of answering. So she waited a long time, until the dark got so thick under the trees she imagined she could taste it. Then, crawling slowly with her belly low to the ground, she approached the camp.

From there, she could smell... something else. Something new. Her ears perked.

It was easy to follow the scent to its source. Easier still to avoid the late-night sentries guarding the periphery of the camp. With the fires burning low, there were many long shadows for her to slip between. The problem came when she got close, and saw the silhouettes of two faunus standing outside the tent. Guards.

She couldn't stand to walk away, not now that she was so close to the alien smell. So she circled around to the back, slithered behind a stack of crates, and eased a claw into the canvas. Moving slowly and smoothly so that there was only a whisper of tearing cloth, she cut a hole large enough to poke her snout inside.

The smell grew stronger. Her nostrils flared as she peered into the tent. There was a chair against the wall right where she had torn the canvas, and her head was hidden under the seat. She inched forward—

And something plopped to the ground in front of the chair. A hatchling with a scrap of shell still stuck behind one of her ears, staring at the intruder with guileless violet eyes. She shook stubby wings and made a twanging sound.

"Shh!" The older dragon's ears perked up in alarm, but apparently the dragonet made this noise often—neither guard reacted.

The square snout butted curiously against her own. Tiny paws pressed down on her nose as the little one raised herself up to eye level, a thick and stubby tail whacking against one leg of the chair as it wagged.

She was at a loss. Still hanging most of the way out of a tent, surrounded by faunus who would hunt her, she just... stared. Acting on instinct, she licked the dragonet's head, cleaning off the piece of shell, and was rewarded with a purr as deep as rumbling thunder. The hatchling returned the greeting, then paced around her head to inspect her from every angle. Another twang.

"Gigas."

In an instant she yanked her head back out of the tent, pressing herself into a shivering ball. The dragonet—Gigas—barked a protest. Then a shadow loomed behind canvas walls, and she heard an excited croak.

"There you are," the faceless man rumbled. His shadow bent into a crouch, and for an instant the silhouette of Gigas' head was also visible, poking out from within his arms.

She stayed for too long afterwards, listening to joyful twangs and gentle words of encouragement. Then she remembered that if they found her here, they would kill her. She bolted for the safety of the woods.

It rained that night. As she huddled miserably inside her den, hissing every time a drop of water touched her scales, the ache inside turned into a sharp, stabbing pain. A monster came to her. It was a snake-like creature with two heads, longer than she was but not by much, and about as thick around as her neck. She was glad for the distraction. She pinned it in her claws and watched it wriggle for a long time before she killed it.

"Hey. Emerald."

She turned to keep her back towards Mercury. Of all the people she wanted to talk to right now, he rated... higher than most, actually, which was depressing. But there were only two people and one dragon she'd prefer to silence.

He sighed. "Look, if it comes down to a fight... I can cover you for little red."

"You mean you'll do the dirty work. Like you always do."

"I prefer the term wetworks," he said, and she could hear the smirk. "But no, I meant I can kick her and her dragon around for a couple of minutes. I doubt they're gonna get in the way so much that we have to kill them."

"It shouldn't be different, having you do it."

"'Course it's different. You're a total amateur—I bet you'd get splatter."

He's right.

"You're disgusting."

Mercury turned serious. "The hell's with you? I know it's easier when I do it, why are you bringing it up now?"

Emerald fumbled for a lie and came up empty.

"Oh," he said, into her silence. "Fuck."

"Go away, Mercury."

"It wasn't one of the students, was it?"

"No!" she hissed. "Now go away!"

He was so startled she thought he was actually going to obey, for once—but before he got the chance, Cinder's voice rose high enough to be heard through the walls of Watts' lab.

"—never even asked me!"

The reply was too quiet to make out. Cinder kept yelling.

"No! You've already as good as confirmed—"

"Yes, I know!"

"—can't be serious. They won't take orders from anyone, least of all you!"

There was a long silence. Emerald finally looked at Mercury, and found his eyes had gone wide to match her own. She'd never heard Cinder sound that angry before. At least, she hadn't until...

"No! You work for me, and I forbid—"

More silence.

"Do it, then! And when this is over I'm going to skin you for a saddle!"

"...Huh," Mercury said, after several long, tense minutes. "I guess that's our cue to avoid her for the next few days."

Behind him, the lab door swung open and slammed into the wall. Cinder strode out. Doctor Watts followed her, smirking despite the livid red mark on his left cheekbone. "Beautiful day, isn't it?" he said cheerfully. "But I haven't been hearing much birdsong lately... perhaps it would be prudent to feed the pit dragons for the next few days, to spare the local wildlife."

Emerald wished she could punch the teeth out of that plastic smile of his. Instead she said, "Fine, we'll help hand meat around."

"Lovely. Cinder and I will fetch it from the stores."

Odd, for more than one reason—that was the kind of grunt work he was usually happy to foist off on other people, and Cinder was giving him the kind of look that suggested she was wondering how long she could make his painful death last. But Emerald was too preoccupied to question his strange whim. Something had spooked the students so badly that they had taken off without another word, without giving either her or Cinder a chance to explain.

What if it was Watts? What if he was up to something beyond what Cinder wanted from him, and the students had found out? They were already suspicious of Cinder, which meant that they might not have checked to make sure it was really her doing. He could be doing practically anything in that lab. He could be—

"After we are finished," Cinder said, the words clipped with suppressed rage, "I have a job for you three." Emerald looked around, and jumped—Neo was standing behind them. Probably drawn there by the shouting.

"What?" Mercury drawled. How he still had the nerve to be so impudent after hearing Cinder shout at Watts, Emerald had no idea.

"Schnee isn't going to budge on his son," Cinder said, "and the White Fang can't exactly spur him on with some... proof of life. Not now they've lost him. We're going to have to slow down injections the old-fashioned way."

Emerald's shoulders dropped in relief. This was the kind of thing she could do. She was eager to finally go back to things that made sense.

"We need to go."

"What?"

Neo glanced over her shoulder, but she and Roman were alone—except for the pink earth dragon, Granite, who was curled up in a patch of sun and looked about ready to fall asleep. She wasn't about to report them to Cinder.

"Not out loud," she signed, irritated.

He grimaced, then switched to signing. "What did you hear?"

"Watts is planning something. And Cinder doesn't like it."

"She doesn't like a lot of things," Roman pointed out, but he looked worried. "Are you sure?"

"Very." Neo didn't know what Watts had done, but it hadn't just pissed off Cinder. It had also apparently sent every single one of the students, and their professors, running for the hills.

Roman considered that for a moment. "You're right. If there's some secret she's keeping that can drive that many people away from her that fast, she's going to lose."

Neo started to sign her reply, then froze when she heard a concerned rumble over her shoulder. Granite was watching them intently. Slowy, Neo spelled out, "Can you understand me?"

The pit dragon lit up and let out an excited bark, all drowsiness forgotten. She made a series of complicated motions of her head, paws, and tail. Neo glanced at Roman, who was equally lost. "Sorry," she signed. "I don't know what that means."

Granite slumped.

"Look! If you can, tell the others—"

But she was already curling into a ball, her eyes sliding shut. Her tail twitched, stirring a small pile of bones that were all that was left of her most recent meal. Neo sighed and turned back to Roman. "Maybe we should try to look for the rest of them."

He shook his head. "No. It'd take a hell of a long time to get them to listen to us, if we could do it at all, and something feels wrong here. I don't want to stick around long enough to find out what."

Neo didn't, either.

"Can Whisper carry both of us?" Roman asked.

At that, she managed to smirk. "Please," she signed. "Even your big head isn't that heavy."