Happy Friday everyone! This chapter, Ironwood gets a message he really wishes was spam or bills or a debilitating computer virus.

52. Insubordination

Four of the new lightning eggs failed—one after another, all in the two days after they'd been injected. Sienna had judged the one that remained to have the worst chances, since it was the most different from the formula that had given them Gigas. She waited for the first two hatchings. Only the first two. Each time had reminded her far too much of the dead dragonet that had preceded her first.

Sienna was convinced that the fifth and final egg would also be a failure, so she opted to ignore it in favor of planning a future raid with the Lieutenant—and also, though she tried to hide it, sneaking glances at the blocky hatchling clinging to his pant leg.

Their meeting place was cramped by necessity. They had cleared out a space near the back of a food storage tent to accommodate and hide Gigas. Since it was still full of canned goods as far as Hazel was concerned, it wouldn't seem suspicious that the place was kept guarded. The human was away from the camp for now... but they had other reasons to make sure the hatchling couldn't roam about without his rider.

The Lieutenant had started to show a marked preference for discussing logistics here. Looking down at the dragonet chewing on his bootlace, Sienna could see why.

"We've managed to hold onto our Dust, for now," she said, "so of course we're running out of eggs."

"Not many brooderies we haven't hit yet," the big man rumbled. As he spoke, he slipped a few dried raisins from his pocket and fed them to Gigas. (They'd learned not to give him too much fruit, though—he had a sweet tooth, but if he didn't eat enough meat he got sluggish.)

"But there are some."

"Might be better to just move," he pointed out.

"I'd agree, if we didn't have to worry about hiding this one." Sienna nudged Gigas gently with her foot, hiding a smile when he twanged and nosed curiously at her ankle. "See if there are any... smaller..." She trailed off, her ears flicking towards a disturbance outside.

Seconds later, a technician skidded to a stop at the tent's entrance. She was bent almost double to catch her breath. "Sienna—egg—alive—"

Sienna didn't run. She walked briskly, but couldn't find the enthusiasm she needed to sprint. Only a strange sense of dread that she pushed down, scolding herself—if it died, they would inject another egg.

When she reached the lab, the dragonet was perched on another technician's gloved hand. She turned to look at Sienna the moment she stepped inside—the movement of her head was jerky, almost birdlike.

"Here," the man said, holding the hatchling towards her.

Sienna hesitated. She couldn't have said why—it felt wrong, somehow, to touch the creature. She pushed that down, too. Reached out... and jumped. Static popped the instant her skin touched the dragonet's claws.

When she looked up, the Lieutenant was watching her. "I do seem fated to a painful partnership," she said wryly.

Another spark bridged the gap between the hatchling's horns. They were long and slender, standing straight out from her skull. Yellow lines webbed over scales that would otherwise have been a drab grey. Her horns and claws, and the spines that ran down her back and tail, were all bright gold and often sparked. She was slender where Gigas was stocky, but her eyes—a vivid magenta—roved around the lab in just the same way. It reminded Sienna of more than just Gigas.

"She looks..." Sienna swallowed the word she would have used. "Healthy."

The Lieutenant hummed.

An hour later, the dragonet still wasn't dead. She ate a generous helping of whatever food they could spare—mostly pickles, which Sienna was sure her hybrid would have thrown a fit over. Every time she touched something, there would be a little pop, and she'd jump and cheep and look around as if searching for the source of the noise. Thankfully, the constant static didn't seem to hurt her. Sienna envied the technicians their rubber gloves.

When her new hatchling survived her third hour of life, Sienna carried her back to the tent to meet Gigas. The gravity dragon blinked at her. When he touched their noses together, he drew back with an alarmed bark. It still baffled Sienna that such a loud, deep noise could come from such a small creature, and apparently her dragonet agreed. She squeaked and wound herself around Sienna's ankles, making the hair on her legs stand on end.

In time, she overcame her shyness and gave Gigas a cautious sniff. They warmed to one another quickly after that, and were wrestling playfully in the dirt within minutes. By the time Harbinger and Justice arrived, the gravity dragon hardly even reacted when he was shocked. Thick scales, probably.

"What do you think you'll name her?" Ilia asked. They watched as Harbinger introduced himself—much less fearfully this time—and purred when the dragonet climbed over his forepaws. Justice tried to lick her and drew back with a whine. He left his tongue sticking out, his eyes crossing slightly as he tried to see if the electricity had left a mark.

Sienna crouched beside the hatchling. She looked up. Even standing in one spot and staring up at the faunus, she was never entirely still. Her tail twitched, her toes flexed, and electricity danced between her horns and the spines on her back. Always in motion.

"Flux," Sienna decided. She hadn't thought about it beforehand—hadn't expected it to come to her so easily, when she'd spent so long thinking about...

But this time, she wouldn't be taking any chances. Flux would stay with Gigas, locked in a tent until they were old enough to understand commands. With two of them, hopefully they wouldn't get too bored.

Sienna had a call to make.

She didn't bother stepping away—they'd already discussed this beforehand. It would have been better if more than one of the eggs had survived, but they couldn't help that now. She raised her scroll to her ear and called Cinder.

"What."

Her eyebrows shot up at the barely contained rage in Cinder's voice. "The lightning dragon hatched."

"And?"

She glanced down at Flux, who was climbing Harbinger's tail. "It was dead right out of the shell. We've adjusted the formula, and we're injecting more eggs now."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

"Let me be very clear," Cinder said finally. "Your incompetence has forced me to seek additional help. I do not appreciate being forced to deal with this... third party. Fix your problem, Sienna, or I will give you a much bigger one." She hung up.

"Ah," Corsac said, into the silence. "That was... unfortunate."

Sienna grimaced. "Bad timing. And now we're working on an even tighter schedule."

The Lieutenant bent down to feed Flux a raisin. "We'll manage. With this one, we've got four dragons."

"Five," Ilia corrected him.

Fennec's ears flicked. "Brand is... perhaps..."

"Not going to attack us," Sienna said firmly. He might not support them if they needed to deal with Hazel, but so long as they were careful it shouldn't come to that. "You're right—it's not many, in the grand scheme of things... but it's twice as many as we had months ago." She allowed herself a small smirk as Flux pounced on a grasshopper.

She was worth it.

Yang had never thought that nothing happening could be so stressful.

After the disaster that came around the last time they got away free and clear, she wasn't the only one who kept shooting suspicious glances at the clear blue sky. This couldn't be it. They knew Cinder was planning something, and that it involved Watts, and based on those first two they could guess that it would be bad.

But Yang had a job to do, so she bottled up all the uncertainty and fear and put on a smile. "Hey," she said, ruffling Ruby's hair. "Did you eat yet?"

"Um..."

That face meant no.

"C'mere." Yang kept her little sister safely stored under one arm—squirming and struggling, as if that would do her any good—while she fetched some granola bars from her pack. Then she let her escape long enough to have... lunch? Dinner? It felt a bit sad to call this an actual meal, but making a fire seemed like a bad idea out here.

"Better?"

Ruby hid under her hood and nodded.

The group stopped for a short break, mostly for Storm's sake. Penny hadn't told them to, which supposedly meant her wing still wasn't in any danger of getting worse, but walking all day exhausted everyone and she needed to heal. Ruby wasn't the only one who started fidgeting once they weren't moving—even Professor Goodwitch kept grimacing and glancing up at the sun to judge the time.

Ruby was definitely chafing the most, though. Yang distracted her by telling anyone who would listen embarrassing stories from when they were kids—she fired back, which really distracted her. Having their entire group of friends know about the Great Teddy Bear Fire was a small price to pay, if it got Ruby to smile. Which it did. As an added bonus, Blake and Weiss also smiled (and laughed), mostly at Yang.

They started moving again, which was better. Jaune sang a campfire song (badly). Nora joined in (cheerfully off-key). Finally Specter whined and put his paws over his ears, and both of them were too busy laughing to belt out the thirty-third verse of One Hundred Beowolves and Ninety-Nine Bullets. Neptune decided Weiss must have spoiled him for everyone else's singing.

Yang relaxed a bit. Ruby still hadn't left Storm's side, but she was watching Jaune and Nora try to get the other half of team JNPR to pick up where they left off, and she was grinning. Everything was okay for the moment, but—

Someone elbowed her in the side and said, "Hey."

She looked up. Sun was walking next to her. "Uh, hi?"

"Just, uh... wondering how you were doing."

"Me? I'm fine, I'm just—"

"Looking after Ruby, I know." He winked. "I figure if you and Blake are making sure Ruby and Weiss are okay, somebody should do the same for you."

"That's... actually pretty cool of you. Thanks." She paused. "Though... maybe hold off on checking up on Blake for a bit."

Sun's tail twitched. "What? Why?"

Yang pointed to where her other two teammates walked under one of Specter's wings. "I think she's busy."

"Oh. Right." He ruffled a hand through his hair. "Is it just me, or have they been kinda..."

"It's not just you. Weiss took the whole thing pretty hard, and Blake doesn't do anything by half-measures. Apparently that includes trying to cheer people up."

"Gotcha."

A minute or two passed in silence. Ahead of them, Ruby hung off one of Ren's arms. If that was still the same conversation, Yang was pretty sure they were about to find out what his singing voice was like.

"So. How's my distraction game?" Sun asked. "I know I'm not gonna top yours, but in my defense I never burned a poor—"

"Ha," Yang said flatly, slapping him hard on the back so that he cut off mid-sentence. "You're funny. And..." She made a show of thinking it over. "I'll give it a six out of ten."

"Only a six?"

"I'm being generous. You talked about the other teammate I've gotta worry about, you dork."

"Whatever."

Yang gave him a gentle shove. "Shoo! Go talk to Neptune, I want to hear Ren and Pyrrha."

Sun snapped off a two-fingered salute and retreated.

Justice was gone again. In his absence, there were Grimm.

She was getting better at killing them, and embracing the silence so that she didn't try to talk to them. Maybe it was wrong to blame him for that—but obviously not as wrong as it had been to tell him how easy it would be to find Rudder. Apparently that was as awful a crime as killing one of the Fang.

She hissed and dug her claws into the squirrel she'd just caught. It shriveled up under her paws until she could eat it, savoring every bite. Then, against her better judgment, she wandered closer to the camp. The spaces between tents were dark. She slipped between shadows and wondered if moths felt like this when they circled the lamps and torches that lit the camp—did they know it would burn them?

When she reached the tent she wanted, she crouched behind the same stack of crates. Her nose slipped inside. She didn't smell any faunus... but Gigas wasn't alone.

Curious now, she pushed her head in far enough that she could see. Two magenta eyes looked back at her from only inches away. She jerked back, and at the same time the tiny hatchling squeaked and dove for cover behind a small crate that was being used as a table. Gigas twanged at them both.

After a few moments, when she still hadn't pounced at him, the dragonet poked his head out again. He was all gold and grey, and shaking like a leaf in a storm. She greeted him carefully, keeping her head low to the ground so she wouldn't scare him.

Gigas launched herself at him. Sparks jumped. She bowled him over, and the two of them scuffled for a moment before she leaped off him and turned back to the visitor. Once they stilled, she noticed for the first time that there were rope collars tied around each of their necks, fixed to the pole in the center of the tent. The leashes were long enough that they could reach every part of the room... but they wouldn't be able to explore as she had.

Her ears went flat. The younger hatchling let out a shrill shriek and hid behind his sister. Gigas blinked at him.

A noise from outside made her slip her head out of the tent. She hissed a warning to the little ones, telling them to stay away from the opening she'd made, and hoped they were old enough to understand. She thought she might have in their place, but she couldn't really remember being that small.

Footsteps approached. She recognized them instantly—Sienna. A familiar ache started in her chest, which she ignored. She was not on a leash, and never would be. That was more important. Or so she kept telling herself.

"What is it, Flux?" A dark shadow against the tent's canvas wall knelt down. Another shadow stretched out—a hand, coming up to stroke him. Just like the Lieutenant and Gigas, or Ilia and Justice.

It didn't take long for Sienna to soothe Flux. Once the faunus was gone, she poked her head inside again. Flux didn't squeak or duck away this time. He just stood there. Twitching. Electricity arced between his horns as she watched him. Outside the tent, where neither he nor Gigas could see, muscles bunched in her back legs. Her tail flicked back and forth. Preparing to pounce—to attack him or to steal him, she didn't know.

Then she reached out, and licked him once. He had a coppery taste to him, a bit like blood, and her tongue tingled where it touched his scales. Her replacement purred and curled up in a ball. He kept twitching, even in his sleep.

She wasn't surprised when the Grimm found her in the woods, later that night. She talked to them for a long time before she killed them.

"Sir, you asked to see me?"

Winter had been trying to keep the exhaustion out of her voice for a long time, now—the facade was getting thin. Not that the General was much better, with his hair uncharacteristically rumpled and stubble shadowing his chin.

It had been, to put things insultingly mildly, a shit month.

He looked up and gestured for her to close his office door. "There's been a message from the council."

Nearly a decade of military training just barely kept her from blurting, Is it Weiss? She wasn't sure why she bothered—General Ironwood took one look at her and shook his head. "Nothing to do with the missing students, which means they're probably still in hiding somewhere. I'll let you know if I learn anything."

Relief flooded her. The General winced and said, "It still isn't good news."

She hadn't thought it would be. "Sir?"

"The Council offered us protection. In case the rogues target Atlas next."

Winter narrowed her eyes. "Protection, or inspectors?"

A tired smile. "You're sharp as ever."

"Would that be so bad? This academy doesn't have defective dragons."

He grimaced. "No, and if that were all I wouldn't be worried. They also want to implement certain... measures. Reinforced doors on the stables that lock at night, tracking devices for the dragons, council Riders all over the campus..." His lip curled. "They suggested an in-house expert to perform cullings. I'm not sure how I managed to stay polite telling them where they could shove that idea."

"How much of that would be mandatory?"

"Most of it. They let the culling idea slide once I presented it as a waste of resources, since they're so rare up here."

The ones that happen later in life, anyway. But she knew better than to say that out loud. Instead she stood at parade rest, her hands clasped in front of her, waiting for him to tell her why he'd called her to his office in the first place.

General Ironwood slumped backwards in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Hypothetically... if the rogues did attack the academy, whose side would you be on?"

"Yours, sir," she said instantly.

He nodded, having expected that answer. "And if your sister—"

"I'd abstain. Sir."

"Technically that's insubordination," he pointed out.

Winter nodded. She owed this man a great deal—but she had other, older debts to repay.

Fortunately the General didn't seem surprised by that, either. He stared out one window across the school's grounds. Several students were racing their dragons in circles around the main courtyard, whooping and laughing loudly enough that the sound carried all the way up to the office. Winter frowned—young or not, they were part of the military. A little decorum... but the sight had put a sad smile on General Ironwood's face.

"And what if you were able to choose?" He still wasn't looking at her. "If you could do whatever you thought was right, what would you want?"

"That's a dangerous question, sir."

"You want the council gone, then."

She opened her mouth to protest—then closed it.

"Sorry." General Ironwood ran a hand through his already messy hair. "I shouldn't have asked, but... well, I needed to talk to someone before I jumped headfirst into this mess, and I knew you'd give me an honest answer."

"I didn't say anything."

"No, but you didn't deny it when I guessed. You're not a very good liar, Winter."

She didn't deny that, either.

"I think Ozpin would tell me to stay the course," the General mused, turning his gaze back towards the window. "But I can't ask him, and frankly I'm not sure I could do that even if I wanted to. So." He glanced at Winter. "If this all goes to hell, do me a favor, will you?"

"Of course."

"Find Lionheart, and see if you can get him to grow a spine."

"Sir?" Winter blurted, concerned now.

General Ironwood turned to the terminal set into his desk, and typed out a reply. He made no attempt to hide the screen from her. His message was polite and respectful, and demurred on the subject of protection—saying that the school was already well defended by its resident students and faculty.

When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair with a look of deep satisfaction on his face. Winter could see the weight that had lifted from him. "Now," he said, cracking the knuckles on his flesh-and-bone hand. "Let's find out how long I can pretend that wasn't a declaration of war."