Day One
Kurt Wagner had been at the Xavier Institute for exactly one hour and twenty-four minutes when he felt the strange, bone deep hum vibrating through the kitchen floor. His tour guide, one Scott Summers, dropped the bag of potato chips he had pulled out of a cupboard and grabbed Kurt by the shoulder.
“Quick, take your shoes off!” he said.
“Um...” Kurt flexed his large blue, bare toes; he'd never worn shoes in his life.
“Right. Sorry. Just come with me!”
Spade-tipped tail twitching nervously. the young mutant followed his tour guide through the halls of the mansion. Other students began to fill the hallways, some chatting excitedly, others looking as lost and bewildered as Kurt felt. Through the large windows he could see the colorful shapes of dragons darting over the Bayville skyline, some with riders on their neck ridges. Bronze, brown, green, blue. He smiled uncertainly as he paused to watch a blue nearly his own shade pass by.
Scott grabbed Kurt's three-fingered, lightly furred hand. “No time to stare, man, we've gotta get to the hatching sands!”
Stumbling after his fellow mutant, Kurt found himself suddenly outside with the throng of other students hurrying toward the mountain-like arena he'd seen on his arrival to the school astride Scott's own dragon, a bronze named Cyth. He passed from early morning summer sun into warm, echoing shadows as the crowd bustled into the cave-like tunnels of the dragons' hatching arena.
“Just follow the dragons,” Scott gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and pushed him forward before vanishing into the throng.
Mouth slightly agape, Kurt followed the huddle of his fellow students into a large arena. Dragons swooped through massive holes that let sunlight and air in through the stone ceiling. A few deposited students onto the sands while most settled in varicolored ranks on perches, a bone-shaking hum issuing from their throats.
Heat and grittiness touched Kurt's bare toes and he flinched, instinctively teleporting himself away from the pain in a cloud of sulfurous smoke. He reappeared a few feet back to see the students who had been around him waving hands in front of their noses. A few dragons craned their heads toward him, still humming. Kurt swallowed nervously and edged back toward the hot sands.
Hopping gingerly from one foot to the other, he finally got a look at what had everyone so excited. Near the back of the cavern, a red-headed young woman stood with her hand on the lowered neck of the biggest dragon Kurt had ever seen. The dragon was a fiery gold, eyes swirling an ominous red, her mouth open to reveal rows of sharp teeth as the small crowd gathered closer around her clutch of shivering eggs. She was at least the size of a jet.
“Some welcome,” a brown-haired girl muttered nervously at his shoulder.
“Jah,” Kurt said, still staring at the queen dragon.
The girl turned her head to look at him and flinched away with a small, “Whoa.”
Sighing, the blue mutant swallowed his uncertainty and hurt for the time being and fixed his yellow eyes on the dragon eggs. He knew as much about dragons as the average person. They had been created several decades prior in an attempt to help control the growing human mutant population but had instead bonded with their intended prey more firmly than any humans who didn't carry the little understood X gene. Their special needs and many uses in society at large had helped integrate mutant kind into the wider world but prejudice was still much a part of mutant life, as Kurt knew all too well. He'd been told before transferring to this American school that there was a chance he would impress a dragon of his own. Kurt hadn't expected it to happen practically the moment he'd arrived.
A sudden hush settled over the mixed crowd of humans and mutants watching from bleachers and dragon perches as the dragons' hum grew more insistent. Kurt's eyes fixed on an egg that had a growing crack in it along with the rest of the students on the hot sands. A wet beak of indeterminate color pushed at the shell with insistence. It toppled onto it's side and rolled in the sand, covering the struggling dragonet as the crowd gasped in dismay.
Beside him, the brown-haired girl stepped nervously toward the quivering egg with a gasped, “Oh no!” She pushed the egg onto it's side and hurried a few steps back, watching as a wet green claw kicked a hole in the shell. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief as the little green wiggled her way out with a cantankerous shriek. She wobbled toward the crowd of nervous students on unsteady legs before stumbling into the same girl who had touched her egg. The girl knelt to help the dragon back up and Kurt heard her gasp as she met the little creature's eyes.
“Shacath?” she whispered.
It felt almost obscene to watch them so fixedly and Kurt turned his eyes from the newly impressed pair as the crowd cheered. Other eggs had begun to crack and the huddle of students was slowly dispersing. Kurt felt as nervous and alone as he had when Scott and Cyth had arrived to take him halfway across the world. Three more impressions had occurred while he stood in a daze, absently rocking from one hot foot to another.
Something heavy slammed into Kurt's back, knocking him forward. He teleported back onto his feet after his second roll through the hot sands, feeling grit in his fine fur.
“Hey, watch where I'm goin', freak!” a boy he hadn't seen before but who Kurt could smell even at this distance said, glaring.
“Watch where I'm going?!” Kurt crouched in a fighting position, tail lashing. “And you are not someone to be throwing 'freak' around, meine friend.”
A rumble of dismay came from the crowd as the two boys lunged for each other. A brown dragonet squealed as Kurt's foe knocked its new partner to the ground. The blue mutant tried to teleport himself and his reeking combatant away from the other students and milling dragonets but couldn't get his bearings. He tumbled out of the air and landed hard on his back, kicking the other boy off with his teeth bared. Kurt rolled to his feet, crouching for another spring when he felt a heavy weight on his tail.
Please stop, a small voice said in his head.
“What...?” his posture relaxed just in time for the smelly boy to tackle him sideways.
Kurt's tail whipped up with a spray of sand and a dragonet's squeal. He tried to wiggle out from beneath the weight digging him into the sand when his attacker let out a shriek. A sharp blue beak, wet and dotted with sand, was clamped on the boy's arm, blood welling around it.
You will leave my Kurt alone! the voice shouted in his head.
“Nirath, let go!” Kurt gently grabbed the dragon's jaws and tried to pry them off the other boy's arm without pausing to think how he knew the dragon's name or why it mattered.
He was trying to hurt you! Nirath growled so low in his throat Kurt could feel it in his hands.
“I think he is done with that,” the blue mutant said soothingly as the dragon let his opponent go.
“You got that right,” the boy scooted backwards in the sand, clutching his arm, jaundiced eyes wide.
Stroking Nirath's eye ridges on instinct, Kurt felt a wave of euphoria wash over him and the world beyond his dragon's swirling, faceted eyes faded away. Nirath crooned piteously and Kurt felt his own stomach knot with hunger pangs. Dimly he was aware of a commotion behind him, the boy he'd been fighting starting to yell and his voice growing suddenly soft and awed, but Kurt couldn't bring himself to care.
A heavy hand landed on Kurt's shoulder. “That dragon ain't gonna feed himself, fuzzball,” a deep voice rumbled.
Looking up and through a haze of euphoria, Kurt saw a short, sturdy man with dark hair and hard eyes tinged with a fond warmth peering down at him. Muttering a confused apology, the blue mutant got to his feet and found himself not much shorter than the man. Nirath crooned and nudged at Kurt's leg until the boy put his hand back on the dragon's head. They followed the stranger toward a knot of other students in a side room that stank of fresh meat.
“You'll wanna watch those fingers, kid,” the man said as he set a bucket full of finely chopped meat cubes beside Kurt. “Looks like you ain't got too many to spare. Feed him one at a time until he can't eat anymore. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Kurt said, still dazed.
“You catch that, frog boy?”
“Y-yeah. Sure.”
Startled by the familiar voice, Kurt flinched and glanced over his shoulder to see the boy who'd pummeled him on the sands standing on shaking legs, arm still bleeding, with a smug-looking green dragonet by his side. The boy looked shocked, sickly and pale, but he knelt to feed his new dragon with a look of tenderness that seemed alien on his features. Kurt didn't realize his mouth was open until Nirath nudged him back to attention with an impatient screech.
“Ack, right. Sorry, meine friend,” Kurt murmured and set to work carefully dropping cubes of bloody meat down Nirath's open maw.