Author's Note: As always, uncensored version of my works can be found on AO3.

A New Adventure

When Weiss opened her eyes, Yang was still sound asleep beside her. The dragon had barely moved during the night, the only change Weiss could see was Yang's arm now lying limply over her side. Everything was warm and comfortable around her, a pocket of heat that made her loathe the idea of sliding out from beneath Yang's arm. So instead, Weiss cuddled closer, pushing her face more firmly against the shoulder that had been her pillow through the night.

For a long moment, she just lay there, looking up at the sleeping dragon's face, listening to the soft hiss of breath as Yang's chest rose and fell.

This completely unfair, she thought, eyes narrowing as she glared peevishly up at Yang. She doesn't even have to do anything, and I'm already climbing into her arms.

Growing up at her father's palace, Weiss had always known how her life would turn out. She would be married off, for one political alliance or another, most likely to the heir of a neighboring city. Or one of Atlas' trading partners. Or perhaps as some sort of peace treaty. But one way or another, she knew she would one day find herself in charge of the household of some monarch or lordling, responsible for the servants and the household staff, supporting her spouse in the act of governing whatever territory they ruled.

It was a future she dreaded. A life she wanted nothing to do with.

Instead, she had dreamed of a life beyond her city's walls. Of travel and new lands, of experiencing the sort of adventures the court storytellers and poets spoke of. For one short summer, she dreamed of becoming an Amazon, joining that distant society of female warriors. She dreamed of hunts and battles, of far-off lands and peoples, but deep down, she always knew what would eventually be her fate.

But now ... now that future was gone. Destroyed by a superstitious mob and a protective dragon.

She had no dowry, no marriage prospects, few possessions other than the clothes on her back and the sword Yang had given her. Finally she had the freedom she had always longed for. True freedom, from her father, her city, her people.

And absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Sighing, she looked back up at Yang's sleeping face and frowned. That was the catch, wasn't it? She was free, and had no notion of what she wanted to do with that freedom.

It was something she had grown to realize the longer she stayed with Yang. That aside from conversation, there was little she could provide for her. Yang didn't need her protection, there was no household for her to run, no political games for her to handle. She didn't need advice on balancing the needs of farmers or merchants, or even the military knowledge Weiss had accumulated, listening at her father's side.

Weiss was useless here, other than as an extra pair of hands to move Yang's treasures down to the lower tunnels. But eventually Yang would have her hoard in order. Eventually, she would find a new home, a new lair. And then what? Weiss asked herself. Will you be some permanent household guest? Living off her treasure, in her home?

That was what rankled Weiss the most. The imbalance of it all. Yang was a dragon, wealthy beyond the dreams of most mortal men, and Weiss had nothing to give in return. Yang rescued her, saved her, and all she could do was wipe away the blood.

She glanced back at Yang, and let her gaze wander, trailing down the side of her neck, to the muscles of her shoulders, the hard lines of her collarbone, to the soft, welcoming swell of her breasts. As if the scales weren't already tipped to her side. She has to be taller and larger too.

Even last night, the dragon had made it all about Weiss. Her happiness. Her pleasure. Not even giving Weiss the chance to return the favor. I'm taking advantage of her generosity. I can't even make love to her without feeling like a leech. I can't ...

Now that was an idea. Staring at Yang, Weiss waited, looking for any sign that she was about to wake. Convinced that the dragon was fast asleep, Weiss wriggled just a little lower inside the blankets. She needed to move as little as possible. The whole thing would be pointless of Yang woke up too early.

If Yang wanted to take the lead like last night, fine. But Weiss was going to pay her back. And I can definitely think of worse ways to wake up.

Weiss took a breath, let it out, then lowered her mouth Yang's cheek. Soft kisses trailed their way down her jaw, until Weiss' mouth closed on Yang's.

A low moan broke the silence, Yang's mouth still slightly open, brow furrowing just a little as she slept. Smiling at the sound, wondering what the other woman was dreaming about, Weiss pressed closer, cuddling up against the dragon's side. She kissed her again, reaching back to sweep a strand of ivory hair back behind her ear.

Another moan split the air, and Yang's hips twitched up as the blonde arched her back, unconsciously pressing harder against Weiss' hand, looking for more sensation even in her dreams. Deciding it was time, Weiss kissed her one more time, before before biting gently down onto Yang's lip. It wasn't rough, or even that hard, but the pressure was just enough to make Yang's eyes move behind their lids, flutter, and then finally open.

"Morning." Weiss said, smiling to herself as Yang's breath caught.

"W-weiss?" The blonde said, half-out of breath. "Wha-what are you-"

Weiss kissed her on the mouth, silencing the question before Yang could finish. "I thought it was unfair for me to be on the receiving end all night."

She stood and made her way over to her clothes. Shaking them out, she dressed quickly, gathering her hair up in one long ponytail that trailed past her shoulders. Looking back, she found the dragon staring at her, breath still a little labored, completely and utterly speechless.

"Come on." Weiss said, turning to hide her smile. "Your hoard won't sort itself."

Yang could feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she made her way down the tunnels. The last thing she expected when she fell asleep was to be woken up like ... well, like that.

None of it made any sense. One minute, Weiss wanted release, some kind of comfort after everything she'd experienced. She wanted something physical, a kind of intimacy she had only really shared with Yang, and Yang made good on that. She gave Weiss everything she could, until the petite princess fell asleep in her arms.

She was fine with that. For now, at least. It made sense that Weiss would feel alone after being betrayed by her family. The fact that she could trust Yang at all – trusted her to hold her, to please her – was a small miracle. Yang understood. She knew how hard it could be to trust someone, how much time you needed before you'd be willing to open up again. To risk yourself with someone else. And she was fine with that. She was, she really was ... for now.

But waking up to find Weiss kissing her ...

She's just trying to pay me back, Yang decided, shaking her head to clear it. You know how much she hates feeling indebted to you.

Right. That had to be it. The same reason Weiss was sticking around – her need to pay Yang back for the events that had left her home in shamble. As unnecessary and pointless as that need was, it did make some sort of sense. A lot of sense, actually, Yang grumbled to herself, especially since she's so annoyingly stubborn about not being in 'debt'. In that case ... well, she'd just have to make sure Weiss didn't feel 'left out'. Assuming they ever slept together again, of course. From what Weiss had said, it could have just been a one-time thing.

Yang blew out another long breath and turned the corner. She could hear Weiss further down, the muffled movement of stone as the princess started to clean the chamber. It was the last cavern they had to check, the last one stable enough to try and recover anything from. Another one Yang had been trying her best to avoid. This part of the caves had been hit hardest by the cave-in, whole rooms and tunnels collapsing, filled to the brim with rock and dirt.

She supposed she should consider herself lucky. This could have been one of the rooms buried completely, with no hope of recovery. Still, she didn't want to see what must have happened to ...

She came into the room to find Weiss carefully pulling a small wooden box out from inside a pile of stone.

"Don't touch that!" Yang shouted, eyes wide. Before Weiss had time to blink, Yang was beside her, taking the box from her hands and running her fingers over the lid.

It was impossible. She was so sure it was destroyed. Broken, buried beneath tons of rock and dirt. Never to be found amidst the wreckage. There was no way it could have survived the cave-in, weathered the mountain of stone that had fallen onto her collection. And yet, it had, almost completely intact apart from a crack that ran across the lid.

Yang's fingers shook as she drew them up the length of the crack. Maybe they hadn't been crushed. If the box had survived, maybe, just maybe ...

"What is wrong with you?"

Yang jerked to a halt, suddenly aware of tears trying to well up behind her eyes. She blinked them clear and looked to her side, finding an irate Weiss staring at her in disbelief.

"Sorry." Yang looked back down at the box. She hadn't meant to react like that. She'd just seen Weiss with it, reacted before she knew what she was doing. "I was sure ... I was sure they'd be crushed."

"If the items in here are so important, you should have warned me first," the princess snapped, glaring at her as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts.

"Sorry," Yang said again, her fingers trembling over the latch. There was a chance, a real chance that they'd survived. And now, with them right in front of her ...

"Well?" Weiss snapped, craning her neck to stare up into Yang's face. "Aren't you going to open it?"

Swallowing, Yang took the latch between her thumb and forefinger, and froze. She had to know. She needed to know, and she still couldn't bring herself to lift the lock.

A hand closed on hers. Yang glanced up, and found Weiss staring at her, anger fading into worry as the princess saw the expression on the dragon's face. Taking Yang's fingers, Weiss lifted, ignoring the way she tried to flinch away, tried to do anything other than look into the box.

The lid opened, and a cry of anguish and relief tore from Yang's throat.

Weiss' eyes narrowed as she stared into the bottom of the box. "Yang, are those ..."

Lying along the wooden base were a set of blood-red scales. They were small, far smaller than Yang's when she transformed, the largest of them only the size of her thumbnail. But apart from the color and size, they were a perfect match for hers. That same spade-like shape, narrowing to a tip at one end, gleaming with a luster that could only come from a creature of magic.

Yang breathed, pupils blown wide as she stared down at the small red scales. She was so sure they'd been destroyed. She had long given up hope of finding them like this, intact and unharmed.

"Yang." The dragon looked up at the sound of her name. Weiss was staring at her, her brow furrowed as she reached forward and ran her hand across Yang's cheek.

She was crying. Yang was crying, and she hadn't even realized it.

Pulling away, Yang wiped at her eyes, swallowing again and again as she tried to clear her throat.

"I ... I told you I came here to look for someone, right?"

Weiss nodded, looking thoughtful. The anger that had come from Yang yanking the box out of her hands seemed to have vanished, replaced with concern as she sat, listening to the dragon try and fail to speak. Yang opened her mouth, then closed it, unsure where to begin.

"Years ago, my sister was ... she was taken," Yang managed, despite the lump in her throat. Gods, she hadn't spoken about this in ... well, since her father left. Since she had made her home here, pointlessly hoping that eventually she might find some sign, some clue that would tell her where to go.

"These were hers." Weiss finished for her, hands coming up to brace the back of the box. "What's her name?"

Yang opened her mouth, about to answer, then stopped. Right. Weiss didn't speak draconic. She wouldn't understand, couldn't hear the cadences and the rise and fall of the notes as she sang her name. Switching to the common tongue, she said. "It'd be Ruby Rose, in Common." She swallowed and glanced back down into the box. "For her scales."

"I'm guessing you couldn't find her."

Yang shook her head. "Dad tried. For years. He and I tore across the countryside looking for her." She let out a long, shuddering sigh. "He was gone too long. The people he watches over – his city – they started to suffer. Floods, famines, raiders ... finally, he had no choice. He had to go back."

"But you stayed."

Yang looked into ice-blue pools, not bothering to try and hide the pain in her eyes. "I had to. She's my sister, Weiss. If I had any idea where she was, I'd be ... I'd ..."

Yang trailed off. What would she do? What could she do? She had searched high and low for years, putting the fear of god into anyone, anyone, who knew anything about the people who had kidnapped her.

"Well, it shouldn't be too hard." Weiss said, lowering the box to the ground. Yang resisted for a second, then let Weiss set it aside. Her hands were shaking, and she hadn't even realized. "There can't be that many things that could kidnap a dragon."

She shook her head. "Ruby's not ... our dad is a dragon, but her mom ... Summer was human."

"So your sister, what is she?"

Yang's eyes went red as her head came up, glaring furiously at the smaller princess. "She's not a what, Weiss. She's a little girl, who-"

"That is not what I meant." Unphased by her outburst, Weiss laid her hand on Yang's, squeezing slightly. "I can't help you look if I don't know what she looks like."

"I've looked for years, Weiss. She's gone. Just ... gone."

"Maybe," Weiss nodded, a sad little smile crossing her lips. "But for all those years, you didn't have me."

She didn't know what to say. There wasn't anything Weiss could do that Yang hadn't already done. No one she could find. Still ... at the very least, it couldn't hurt. No more than it already did.

"Is she human?" Weiss asked, her voice soft.

Yang nodded. "Mostly. Dark hair. Silver eyes, but she can't transform, so they always look like a dragon's." She smiled at the memory, of holding her baby sister, seeing those metallic eyes in that pudgy little face. "She had these little crimson scales. Only a few, places like her cheekbones, her jaw, elbows, knuckles. Wherever her bones were close to the skin."

"How old is she?"

"She was only twenty when she was taken, so she'd still look like a kid to you." Yang shrugged. "Maybe mid-teens by now."

"I'm sorry. Twenty?"

"It's the dragon blood. She ages slower." Yang gave her a sideways glance. "How old did you think I was?"

Weiss blinked in surprise, as if the thought had never occurred to her. "... mid-twenties?"

"More like five times that."

"You're a hundred years old?" Weiss' mouth dropped open.

Yang smiled humorlessly. Any other time, she would have loved to see that shocked expression on Weiss' face. "And I'm young for a dragon."

That shut Weiss up. For a long moment, the princess just stared at her, as if Yang was some unfathomable puzzle she couldn't quite figure out. Yang would have laughed if she could – she didn't know why Weiss was so surprised. She was a dragon, after all. Long lives tended to come with being a magical creature.

"Where did you lose track of her?" Weiss said finally, shaking her head.

"Here. I told you, that's why I stayed. I was ... I dunno. Hoping, maybe, I could find their trail."

"Who would want a ..." Weiss paused, her brow furrowed. "Who would want a half-dragon child?"

"I don't know. Maybe some sort of sorcerer? Dragons have inherent magic, but her scales won't do much. She's too young. Any good caster would know that."

"But the people who took her might not."

Yang shrugged. That was something she hadn't considered. She had always assumed the people who took her knew what they wanted, that they had some purpose for stealing away a small child from her family. The idea that they might have just been opportunists, that they hadn't known what they were going to do with her ... it wasn't a good thought. The idea of Ruby trapped somewhere, her scales being taken off again and again to be sold ...

She didn't realize how tightly her hands were clenched, not until Weiss took her chin and forced her eyes back up to hers. Holding her gaze, Weiss waited until the white-knuckles fists began to relax, loosening slowly as Yang bled off the rage that was building in her.

"Yang. We will find her." Yang opened her mouth, about to object, to say Weiss had no idea what she was talking about, then stopped. She had seen that look in Weiss' eyes. The one she'd had while hiking away from her city and shouting at a dragon to leave her alone. The look she'd had when she stood by Yang's side in the palace. When she said she was staying, at least until Yang found a new home.

There was no talking to her like this. She had found something to sink her teeth into and wasn't about to let Yang pry her loose. Even if it was hopeless. Even if Yang had no more clues, no more information she could give her.

"Okay," the dragon sighed. Nothing good would come of this. No leads, no trail, just more aggravation until Weiss finally gave up. But it meant Weiss would stay a little longer. And even knowing how it would end, knowing that she'd be right back where she was ... Yang wanted to hope. She wanted Weiss to be right, that having a new pair of eyes might tell her something she'd missed, something she couldn't find on her own.

"Where do we start?"

The young girl woke to the sounds of movement, hundreds of feet pounding the hard-packed dirt as people funneled into neighboring tent. It carried over the rest of the noise she'd grown accustomed to, the din of fire dancers and performers, of crowds watching the jugglers and the steady thunk of knives being thrown into wooden targets. Even over the growls of the animals nearby, she could hear the footsteps, knew what they meant as the audience funneled into the confines of the tent.

Sighing, she rolled onto her feet and pulled her legs up to her chest. It was almost time. She knew that from experience, even if she couldn't see into the larger tent. Not from here, not with the animals blocking her view, collared and caged to keep them still until the trainers came to get them. But she could always tell from the footsteps, from the smells of food and the loud jumble of voices from the other side of the flap. Her mouth watered at the scent of meat, her stomach growling as she imagined the taste – they always brought out the good game on their first night.

So she sat and waited, watching as the trainers came for one animal after another, leading them out for their performance before returning them to their tent.

"And now, for the creature we know you all came to see," a voice called out over the racket. "The mongrel result of congress between a woman and the great hydra itself. A freak of nature, misshaped and malformed beyond our understanding. The hideous, the amazing ... Lizard Girl!"

With a sigh, the red-scaled girl stood and walked towards the bars of her cage, as far as the heavy chain around her neck would let her. It clinked, and she stopped, not wanting to half-choke herself on the metal collar latched around her neck. Cracking her neck from side to side, she stretched her wings, barely able to extend halfway within the confines of the bars.

That was the one good part of a performance. They always let her fly, let her flap around the tent as the onlookers oohed and aahed.

Plus, she thought, her stomach growling. It means I'll eat tonight.

Author's Note: If you can, PLEASE take the time to leave a review – it lets me know what the reader response is and whether or not I should do more stuff along the lines of whatever I've posted.

So, HERE is the beginning of the new arc. Hopefully it's okay, I went down to the wire a bit on this one. Might feel a bit rushed, and if it does, I'm sorry about that.