Disclaimer:I do not own Rosario + Vampire. I do, however, own the specific type of dragon that I am using in this story, my OCs (Tsukune's dragon father and… someone else), as well as the plot elements that I haven't taken from R+V.

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I have returned! I can only offer my deepest apologies for such a long absence. This is a short chapter, but longer ones will follow.

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Special thanks to keiran aitken for a nice PM, a thought-provoking question and for mentioning my story in one of his.

Addressing a point from LordTheadArmageddon's review: the different types of dragon have inherently different strengths, and I'm sticking to that. Reds are, physically, the most powerful dragons.

However, their racial ability is actually quite poor – they can blast a jet of superhot fire. Other abilities are far more useful – blues can set up defensive fields of electricity, attack with lighting over a far greater range with much more precision, power devices, even defibrillate hearts. Greens can poison or heal with their mist breath, make plants grow faster and more fruitfully, communicate with animals, and so on. Yellows can create illusions, blind people, see what's going on anywhere touched by the sun (admittedly with proportionate effort to distance, location and wards) and so on. Blacks can create darkness or misty clouds of vision-obscuring, lung-burning, eye-watering smoke, and can travel through shadows and darkness, as well as manipulating people through their fears and darkest desires. I could go on, but you should get the picture – in terms of strength, Reds are best, but other dragons are far more versatile with both their natural abilities and their magical affinity. Reds just kill things by hitting them or burning them, whether it be with dragon breath or fire spells.

That said, they do learn a wide variety of magical and sometimes mundane skills, so they aren't just stuck as killing machines, but inherently their versatility pays for their strength and they have to work harder to achieve the same range of ability.

Awesomenemo, the entire point of this story is that dragons have very few weaknesses and that his psyche is the main thing causing him problems. I never said he didn't have any weaknesses. I specifically stated that his fire could be extinguished. By extension, he'll only be able to cope with so much cold. He can still be suffocated. He couldn't survive being thrown into space for more than a short period. If you manage to get down his throat, you could probably do a horrible amount of damage from inside him. Loud and/or high-pitched noises and bright lights will still disorient and blind him. Concussive blasts can still cause internal damage. Radiation can still make him ill.

The only thing that's different is that he has a much higher tolerance to these things. It's still perfectly feasible to kill a dragon (otherwise all those bigoted lizards would have taken over the world by now), it just takes a lot of power.

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The next morning, Moka didn't show up at their usual meeting spot. After fifteen minutes had passed, Tsukune's patience snapped and he cast out a pulse of youkai that expanded in a ring and caused a flaring reaction from everyone it touched. It was flashy and unnecessary, but a little intimidation never hurt. At first, the returning signatures were unfamiliar, but Moka finally showed up.

She was in the art block.

Cursing under his breath in the dragon tongue – a language whose insults were complex, in-depth and very, very long – he stalked in the direction of the low buildings set off to one side of the campus. Though he didn't realise it, his frustration was making his youkai bubble, and everyone instinctively shied away from him as he swore his way across campus. He was so annoyed that his control slipped a little, and his eyes went gold and slitted.

Can't even be bothered to meet me in the morning… ignores my birthday to go modelling… practically uses me as a juice box… why do I even bother?!

When he reached the area, he found Moka just leaving, with the art teacher standing in the door for a few parting words. His nostrils flared. As a dragon, his sense of smell was more acute than almost anyone, and right then it was telling him to be wary. There was a dry, reptilian smell, one he would normally enjoy, but this one was corrupted, almost, with something burning and acrid. There was a scent of stone mixed in, too, though that wouldn't be too unusual if there was sculpture going on. The combination sparked a hazy recognition, but he couldn't pin it down, so he dismissed it. After all, he was a dragon. What could possibly threaten him?

He watched the vampiress skip off down the path towards the school – not bothering to go and look for him, he noted – and the art teacher turned back inside. Something about her grated on his senses, but like the smell it was too insubstantial to bother with. Shrugging, he moved away, breaking into a jog in order to get to classes on time.

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Given that Fate seemed to have it in for him (coming here in the first place, used as a juice box by a vampire, rapist orc, perveted werewolf and not to mention the succubus and ridiculously young witch), it was unsurprising that he had art classes that day. That the art teacher was popular among the students only served to rub salt into the wound – one girl went as far to say she was skiving gym to come and model. Letting loose a particularly vehement draconic expletive under his breath (not that it would have mattered, as nobody could have understood it), he turned back to his Basilisk sculpture. He couldn't make one of a dragon, since they were hated and feared by almost everyone, but the Great Serpents were not so taboo, and one of the few youkai he respected unconditionally.

Looking around, he surreptitiously extended a claw for the fine detail. Rules or no, he wouldn't make anything less than a perfect sculpture for his fellow reptiles.

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The next Newspaper Club meeting was more serious than most. Several girls had gone missing, and Gin wanted to find them. Tsukune almost raised his opinion of the guy, but then he found that his only motivation was that they might be… grateful. Snorting in exasperation, he went through the pictures. None of them were people he particularly recognized, except when he got to the last one. It was the girl who had said she'd be modelling for the art teacher yesterday.

And then she'd disappeared.

Come to think of it… isn't Moka modelling there right now?

He paled, and, wrapping himself in the strongest invisibility spell he knew, he headed for the art block.

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When he entered, it was immediately apparent that something was very wrong. The acrid smell from before was almost overpowering, and the scent of stone, now that he was closer, seemed to be almost mixed with the odour of flesh. Ghosting into a back room, he stopped dead.

All the missing girls were there, turned to stone and weeping constantly. The art teacher was spinning in the middle of the room, arms outstretched, in the middle of a maniacal monologue as Moka was suspended in front of her by a plethora of snakes sprouting from the woman's skull.

"Oh, this is art! The beauty of it, these girls trapped forever in cold stone! Their warm hearts locked away, to weep forevermore! And this next one will be my crowning glory… you, my little vampiress, will look so good in granite!"

Medusa.

Seeing red, Tsukune's claws flashed out and ripped across the woman's scalp, ripping away at least half her snakes. She screamed in agony, and he dropped his spell, bursting into his half-dragon form. Several snakes broke their fangs on his scales as he roared in fury. The woman's face contorted in a rage to match his own. "Interfering lizard! Fine, I'll just move up my plans!"

Even as those words and their repercussions ran through his head, a snake lunged for Moka. Despite his speed, he couldn't get there in time and the petrifying poison immediately began to spread through the girl. Contemptuously ripping the snakes from around her, he carefully set her against the wall and, with an injunction not to move, turned back to the Medusa.

She charged him, snakes snapping, and a good two dozen fangs soon littered the floor. He reached out and picked her up by the neck, one-handed, eyes burning with suppressed fury. "Nobody – and I mean nobody – messes with my friends and gets away with it. You should have been more careful, filth. Now you pay the price."

His throat expanded, and a blazing white bled through the gaps between his scales as heat roared up his throat. Dragon Fire was hotter than anything else on Earth, reaching temperatures usually only seen in stars. The Medusa was not afforded the mercy of a quick death, however, as only the tiniest wisp was spat into her face. It latched on and began eating in, sustaining itself from her flesh, and she fell to the floor screaming, scrabbling away incoherently and staggering off, clawing at the burning remnants of her once-beautiful visage.

He returned to Moka, clawed feet pulverising the wreckage caused by the flailing snakes. She shrank away slightly from the furious snarl on his face, but the golden light around his hands quickly quelled her fears and returned her petrified flesh to normal.

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The school nurse had, much to Moka's distress, insisted on keeping her under observation for a day, along with all the other petrified girls, and she only quieted down once she'd had a whispered conversation with Kurumu. As the night passed, Tsukune remained by her bedside, returning to his half-dragon form once everyone was asleep so that he could inspect his scales. The Medusa hadn't been strong enough to hurt him, but it paid to be careful.

When morning rolled around, Kurumu entered carrying a cloth-covered something, and passed it to Moka, who sat up in bed. She smiled at Tsukune, and pulled the cover off with a flourish, revealing a portrait of him. Her smile turned shy, and her voice was almost inaudible as she mumbled "I did the modelling in exchange for painting lessons so I could do this. Happy birthday… Tsukune?"

He was staring numbly at the portrait. This was the first time he'd ever had a birthday present. His father, old as he was, never paid them any attention and expected the same of his son. Slowly, a smile spread across his face and he pulled the vampiress into a hug. She squeaked in surprise, but nevertheless returned it.

As always, he'd been wrong to doubt her.