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There were few places out to sea that were safer than Blueberry Academy. Ocean liners and freighters couldn’t compete with her stability, no matter how new or how state-of-the-art. A structure like her didn’t really exist elsewhere in the world, something that her designers and engineers enjoyed boasting about at any given opportunity. When the ocean grew rowdy around her, Blueberry Academy sat safe and stable. The howling wind, the driving rain, the crash of thunder and lightning and the rolling waves could not shake her.
Kieran remembered feeling terrified, the first time a storm had come rolling through. He was far from the only student that was uneasy with the nature of Blueberry Academy’s location - plenty of young students frequently voiced their dread about the deep ocean and the vicious weather that could come to call. Kitakami didn’t have weather so dire; even if it did , it wasn’t as if the residents there were in danger of sinking to the unfathomable bottom of the ocean if the worst came to pass. The Academy was unsinkable, supposedly, and came with a long (and admittedly very boring) book on its construction to prove it. Carmine had told him not to worry about it, had said that storms happened out there all the time and that most of the time no one knew about them until after they’d passed.
(He still sat rigidly on the side of his bed that night, shaking and worrying endlessly on when the rough seas would start. When he awoke in the morning, it was with the knowledge that he truly hadn’t felt anything at all.)
Gradually, Kieran thought less and less about stormy weather. He took a trip home, made a friend, had a crisis, had a melt down, went back to Blueberry Academy and thought of nothing but being better. Being stronger. Storm? What storm? Who cared? Then he lost, then nearly died, and…
Other things were important. He hadn’t thought of something as trivial as the weather outside of the school in a long while. Honestly, he wouldn’t have known about the approaching squall if he hadn’t seen the alert pop up on his sister’s phone.
“Tch…” She’d swiped it away with a flick of her finger. “Well, I was going to do a few practice rounds topside, but I guess I’ll just go down to the Savannah Biome…”
Kieran wouldn’t have thought about it more than that, had it not been for Drayton.
Things between he and the eternally-held-back upper classman were…okay? -ish? Kieran really didn’t know. Drayton had enjoyed and reveled in making fun of him for a couple weeks following Kieran’s fall down from Champion of the Blueberry League. Nothing overly mean, maybe, but annoying? Absolutely . It was more heavy-handed teasing than anyone else ever got from Drayton. He still smiled constantly, still laughed and acted chipper, but Kieran could feel some kind of lingering chill between them.
He was, as a result, not expecting much when he found Drayton making his way to the elevators that day and asked where he was off to. It was Kieran grasping at straws, desperate for something - anything - that would make Drayton respond normally. He wasn’t even sure why he was trying so hard. Drayton wasn’t a fantastic guy (far from it) even before Kieran…well…defeated him and all but rubbed his nose in it. By all accounts, Kieran shouldn’t have wanted to be friends with Drayton at all.
So Drayton’s casual answer - “Heading up to catch the storm, wanna come with?” - threw him off.
Bewildered by both the act of answering, the answer itself, and the offer, Kieran all but stumbled in after the taller boy. “Wh…what are you talking about? The…storm?” It took him a moment to even remember that there was going to be one. Kieran’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why would you-- Are you even allowed out when it’s storming?”
“Ahhhh…” Drayton blew a small raspberry with his tongue between his lips, rolling his shoulders. “I’ll be fine. No one’s ever given me a hard time for it.”
“But it’s…that’s…got to be dangerous, right?”
The doors slid shut, and Drayton leaned against the back wall as the elevator rose. “I guess? I’m still here, right? I’ll be fiiiiine.” With a jaw-cracking yawn, he shut his eyes. “I mean…unless you’re gonna try and stop me. But you won’t, will ya? Huh? Just a lil rain, Kiki - I’m a big boy. I can handle it. Question is…can you?”
Kieran liked to think he was far from stupid, that he could see bait when it presented itself and react accordingly. Why he silently stayed along for the ride to the ocean-level section of the Academy was beyond him. He could have easily selected another floor and left Drayton to whatever weird and dubious thing he was up to. Maybe that was part of why he stayed - the idea that his presence might deter Drayton from doing something he wasn’t allowed to do.
Wishful thinking, really; Kieran kept how stupid he felt over that to himself, too.
There was a strong whistling sound as the elevator slowed to a stop. Kieran recognized it as the wind howling beyond the doors - it had been a while since he’d experienced such strong gusts. Even under the cover of the corridor, once the doors slid back the wind rushed in and rustled through their clothes. The little Kieran could see of the battlefield was cast in darkness tinged green.
Drayton stepped out as the doors attempted to shut, forcing them to slide back. He didn’t question if Kieran was coming, didn’t even pause in his casual gait. The smaller boy hastened after him only a second later, pulling the edges of his jacket closer together. A wave of rain blew across the exit to the corridor, splattering the ground with water. A flicker of bright light lit up the sky - a roll of thunder, deep and foreboding, came soon after. Kieran hesitated on the threshold, listening to the loud smack of ocean waves against the building.
“Drayton--” His eyes widened as water washed over the gangway in the distance, a great wave that nearly engulfed the whole stretch. His fingers twitched as if to reach out and snatch Drayton’s sleeve. “H-hey…! I don’t think we should be out here!”
The taller boy finally paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Go back in, then!” He called over the sounds of the building storm. Kieran could only watch in exasperation as the upper classman turned and continued sauntering out onto the pitch.
Naturally, Kieran went with him. He was soaked in seconds - rain drove down on him, laying his hair down flat to his head and weighing down his clothes. He nearly slipped in his haste to catch up, and was jolted back up to his feet by a hand gripping under his arm. “Th…thanks!”
“Just stick close, sheesh…” Drayton grumbled, sounding rather put upon. He kept a loose grip around Kieran’s arm as they went. Instead of heading out to the gangway - where Kieran could see the ocean rising up and over its surface on occasion - Drayton veered off to the side and dragged him to a service door. Kieran expected it to be locked; he was sure that he was about to see Drayton whip out some sort of pick and jimmy it open. It was a bit of a shock to see Drayton just pull it open without a care, wandering through to the ladder beyond. “You wanna go up first, or…?”
“W…what?”
With a scoff, Drayton latched onto the rungs and began to haul himself up. “Just close that door and come up after me…” He grunted, ascending without pausing to hear anything Kieran might have had to say. Frustration ate at the boy’s chest. He yanked the door closed, yelping when the wind helped to slam it shut with an almighty bang. Heart hammering against his ribs, Kieran finally put his hands on the ladder and began to climb.
The roof access passage was narrow, with rounded walls rather than straight edges. It was dark, too; the only light Kieran had to go by were dull red bulbs set every so many feet from one another in the wall behind the ladder. Twice, one of his slippery shoes slipped from the rungs and he gasped in terror before regaining his footing. Neither time did Drayton stop to ask if he was alright. The climb was silent, save for the dull roaring of the storm just beyond the walls.
A rush of air and a howl of the storm suddenly blindsided Kieran. His eyes shot upwards at once, and around where Drayton’s body was he saw the dim light of the stormy sky. Drayton hauled himself out of the passageway and onto the roof, leaving rain to blow in after him and resoak a shuddering Kieran once more. He shut his eyes tightly, clinging to the ladder until he heard someone call for him - the boy forced his eyes open, spotted the silhouette of Drayton’s head peering down at him, and shook off his hesitation. “I’m…I’m coming up! S-Sorry!”
Drayton said nothing. Lightning arched through the air behind him; when Kieran was close enough, the older boy reached down with his hand extended toward him. A second’s hesitation passed before Kieran grasped for his arm; he felt fingers curl around his elbow, holding tightly as he climbed the rest of the way up and out of the column. His feet touched the slippery roof of the academy, his free hand dropping to its surface to help him stand. Drayton kept ahold of him all the while, only dropping his arm when he was finally upright. His mouth opened, a thanks ready on his tongue, but the sound died somewhere in his throat when he finally looked away from Drayton.
Ocean. Ocean all around. Dark, writhing; white-caps frothed across its surface. Each way Kieran turned his head he saw nothing but the sea in total turmoil. Rain battered it, coming down in solid sheets in some places and calmer smatterings elsewhere. The clouds hung low, blowing by like a stampede of Tauros without worry or care for anything beneath them. Even as he looked on, his eyes caught a bolt of lightning that struck the surface of the water miles away. Thunder roared only seconds after, and it felt like the air around him trembled with its power.
“Should we be out here?!” He yelled, twisting his head back to Drayton. “What if we fall off?!”
He was expecting Drayton to look unbothered when he faced Kieran…but instead, Drayton was grinning. There was something in his eyes that burned with a brightness Kieran rarely saw. He merely shook his head at the smaller boy, putting his hands behind his head. “We won’t!” was his reply, loud and clear and full of confidence.
Kieran didn’t believe him, but looked away from his oddly intense expression anyway. He was in time to see a huge wave of water cover the gangway down below, and the sight made him moan in sheer terror. His foot stepped back, searching for the edge of the roof access passage as if to ground himself. “I-It’s not safe…! Drayton, it’s not safe!” The academy was clearly not fit for this storm, not if the ocean was already swallowing parts of it.
But as he watched on, the gangway was revealed again looking perfectly fine. Nothing about it seemed broken or worn away by the wrath of the ocean. In fact, as his eyes trailed along the circumference of the building itself, he saw the water lapping up high enough to spray them both and yet the building itself sat steady and calm. It was bizarre. Surely they should have been rocking around like a rowboat in these chaotic waters, and yet the academy sat as if totally impervious to the raging sea. Lighting again appeared, this time flashing overhead as if clinging to the underside of the clouds - Kieran’s head craned back as he watched it, finally swiveling to see the tail end splinter into smaller and smaller tendrils before the phenomenon was well and truly over. He took a deep breath and wondered just when he’d stopped breathing.
“It’s cool, right?!” Again, his eyes found Drayton. The other boy had his back to Kieran - the gold logo on the back of his jacket stared Kieran down. A huge wave slammed into the side of the academy, throwing up a deluge of water right into their faces. Drayton laughed, shaking himself off. “It’s so crazy! It can’t even touch us up here-- it’s so crazy !”
Honestly, Kieran thought Drayton was the crazy one. As his eyes caught the spindly shape of a waterspout in the distance, though, he found himself slowly beginning to agree. It was cool, once he got over just how downright scary it was to be out in the elements while they were throwing such a momentous tantrum. His footing shifted in that moment and he felt the telltale slide of his feet losing their traction on the surface of the building - in a split second, he grabbed for Drayton’s body. He couldn’t tell if he screamed, so laser-focused as he was on not sliding off of the building into the roiling ocean below. An arm grabbed for him, gripping at his jacket and keeping him upright. He was crushed into Drayton’s side, held steady and on both feet. In spite of it all, Kieran found himself barking out a laugh.
“You could’ve let me slide off!” He blurted out, aware that his fingernails were likely digging into Drayton’s other side in a way that had to be painful. “I wouldn’t have blamed you!”
The hand holding him up, wrapped around his upper arm, tightened its grip. “Don’t go getting suicidal on me, ex-champ!” Drayton called over the wind.
It was a sobering sort of thing to say, really, and it killed off Kieran’s spontaneous giggling rather quickly. He kept his cheek pressed to Drayton’s ribs, his eyes staring off into the distance. The dark clouds seemed to go on forever, just like the vast ocean underneath. After their recent words, Kieran felt a sort of weird kinship with the view - his own descent into madness hadn’t been so long ago, and he could remember how every little thing did nothing but fill him with the sort of dark anger he saw reflected in the waves.
Even as he thought so, a beam of sunlight cut through the rain. He blinked, bewildered. The rain had begun to slow; lighter patches of gray began to appear in the muddled darkness of the cloud cover. Kieran felt his grip loosen as several more small breaks in the clouds let down the afternoon light onto the sea. “Wowzers…”
“This is the nicest part.” Drayton said, and no longer had to shout to be heard. “Don’t go telling anybody, but I think stuff like this is real pretty to look at. Storms never last forever, y’know? They make you really appreciate when things are calm like this.”
“Drayton--” Kieran caught himself, chewing on the side of his tongue. After a moment, he gave the older boy another squeeze around the middle. “...Yeah. I get it. Thanks…for, um, showin’ me, I mean. It feels like it went by so quick.”
There was a yawn - the hand keeping Kieran close finally fell away so that Drayton could stretch it and its fellow high over his head. “Yeaaaahhhh…welp, that’s how storms go out here. Somethin’ about, uh, air-currents and stuff. I dunno. They’re cool to catch when they happen, though. Weather’s always super controlled in the Terrarium - you never get cool stuff like lightning or hail or tornadoes…”
With a nervous laugh, Kieran found himself tugging on his hair. “You…uh…really want to see that stuff…?” His voice came out in a weak squeak. The idea of wanting to be up and personal with a tornado was so insane. His mind picked out the moment he’d seen the waterspout, though, and Kieran was floored to find that he sort of understood. Yeah, actually…that WAS kind of cool.
“Eh.” Drayton shrugged, staring off into the horizon. The rain was receding; Kieran realized that it had slowed to a drizzle. He was prepared for Drayton to drop the subject, but instead the older boy spoke up once more. “...Think it started after Opelucid froze over, honestly, just kinda being into seeing scary weather.”
“F…froze…?”
There was a pause. Drayton lowered his arms, allowing them to simply lay at his sides. His gaze shifted - Kieran recognized after a moment that he was looking toward the mainland. “Yeah. It’s a long story, but the cliffnotes version is that some freakazoids decided to let out this Ice dragon and force it to wreck a bunch of stuff. It froze over Opelucid…my hometown. People were trapped in their homes-- like, literally trapped, couldn’t get out. That was probably the best thing for’em, because people who were outside…” He trailed off. Beside him, horrified, Kieran stood and stared. A second or so passed - Drayton shook his head, reaching up to scratch absently behind his ear. “My ma and I were inside; felt like we had to wait forever to get out. Pretty sure we both thought we’d never get outside again.”
“But you…you’ve got Dragons!” Kieran blurted. Instantly, though, he saw the problem. Drayton fixed him with a patient sort of look, and the younger boy winced. “Oh…you were little, huh?”
“Uh-huh. I had a Dratini - you know her - but she was super young. Ma was never a Dragon trainer; we had a house Meowth, and that was it. Felt like we sat there forever, waking up and looking out the window just to see a solid few feet of ice on the outside of the glass.” Kieran shuddered at the thought of it - the chill of the rain soaked into his clothes wasn’t helping. “My older sister and my grandpa worked with our champion to fix stuff, so ma and me were fine. Most of it was all gone by the time we got out, but I got to see the damage all of it did and pictures people took. And man…MAN was it cold. I don’t think I’ve ever felt cold like that before, almost like it was a living thing that really, reeeeeeaaaaally didn’t like us.”
Kieran watched as Drayton finally shivered, feeling several small dots connect together in his mind. “That’s why the Polar Biome never bothers you, huh?”
“It still does.” Admitted Drayton with a faint smile. “But yeah…not as much as it does you, I’ll bet. That’s part of why I wanted to make that my lil zone. Kinda like I wanted to prove I was better than a lil chill, for some dumb reason. It’s not like I’m gonna see another big freeze like that again…”
“You never know…”
Drayton shook off Kieran’s ominous warning. “Nope. Our champion has that dragon now - Kyurem - and she’s our champion for a reason. I don’t see her going all…well… you on us. No offense, ex-champ.”
With a grumble, Kieran returned to fiddling with his bangs. “Offense kinda taken…” His frustration was very soon forgotten - he’d never had Drayton talk to him like this, even before Kieran had crushed the league and damaged their relationship (friendship? Had they been friends before?). Part of him was loathe to see it come to a close. He buried his irritation in favor of desperately dragging out the conversation. “I mean…it sorta sounds like you just wanna be better than the…weather…? I guess?”
Predictably, Drayton laughed. “Yeah! Yeah…I guess so, huh? How lame does that sound? Ahhh…” Light washed over them both - Kieran squinted, trying to get his eyes to readjust to the sunlight as it began to reflect off of the far calmer ocean around them. Drayton had his hands behind his head, laced loosely together at the nape of his neck. “...I just don’t want to be afraid of it, I think…it never sticks around forever, y’know? Even that big freeze ended, and Opelucid is a-ok now.”
Kieran looked back out over the water. Is that how you feel about me? he thought, Does that mean you feel like we’re okay? He couldn’t bring himself to ask, no matter how desperately he wanted to know. He hugged himself, clenching his fingers in the fabric of his sopping wet jacket, and told himself the quiver in his chest was just the cold (even though the sun was shining warmly down on him by then).
An elbow in his bicep caught him off-guard. When he looked up, Drayton was looking at him in an odd way. Kieran couldn’t really place what made it feel strange at first - it was only when Drayton spoke up that he figured out that it was vulnerability. “Thanks for coming with me and not ratting me out to Lacey. I know it probably freaked you out, but I’ve gotta respect you for staying, too.”
Kieran felt himself smile. “S-Sure. Thanks for, uhm, trusting me…? And letting me come, too. I…uh…I’m glad I did, even if it was a little scary at first.” He thought for a moment, then added: “...I guess…thanks for telling me about that freeze, too. I’m glad you even wanted to.”
The taller boy rolled his shoulders, his grin easy-going if not small. “Hey…friends tell each other stuff like that, right?” Kieran instantly felt his eyes widen; Drayton, in response, let out a strained laugh before mashing a hand down on the top of Kieran’s head. “Whoa, uh-uh, don’t look at me like that!”
“Wah-ah--! Drayton, no, be careful--!”
There was another laugh, this one more natural sounding, and as Kieran shook his hair out of his eyes he caught movement in front of his face. He stared at the hand before him for a moment before finally taking it. Instead of the handshake he expected, though, Drayton merely squeezed his hand a little before tugging him back a pace or two to the hatch in the roof of the academy. “Come on…we should get back inside before someone spots you out here with me.” Drayton told him, using the toe of his shoe to kick open the hatch door. “I’m used to getting in hot water with staff for going places I shouldn’t, but I think you and I both wanna keep your nose as clean as possible.”
It was a fair point - Kieran was currently not in the best standing with the academy staff, given his behavior as the prior league champion, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to test how much they were willing to put up with. Still, he held firm to Drayton’s hand and waited for the boy to look back at him. “We…don’t have to go yet, right? Can’t we stay out here a little more? I…I kinda like it.”
“Huh…? Really?” It was rare that Drayton looked well and truly gobsmacked like he did just then. Even if it only lasted for a moment, Kieran filed the memory of it away for later. The hatch clanged shut as Drayton kicked it over; he dropped Kieran’s hand, sweeping him under one of his arms instead. “Well, alright. Only cause you’re my bud, though. Don’t expect me to spill more about my childhood, either - the ol Drayster’s gotta keep some air of mystery about him, you got it?”
With a small snort, Kieran threw one of his own arms around Drayton’s waist. “You’re so weird , Drayton…but…thanks for being my friend.”
“Don’t make it sappy, ex-champ.”
“Drayton-- aw, man…”
He felt more than he heard Drayton snickering at him. And for a good half an hour or so, it was the last he heard shared between them. The sun slowly dried them both out; the ocean waters finally calmed. A gentle breeze toyed with Kieran’s hair. The squall was already a distant memory, though it left a lasting impact where it counted. It was up to them - to Kieran, to Drayton…to everyone - to learn from its actions and go forward.
---
“What were you THINKING, Kiki?! You could’ve fallen off and DIED!” Carmine’s hands waved dangerously close to his head as they walked. She was in full freak-out mode; nothing he’d said since he and Drayton were busted coming out of the maintenance door had made a difference to her. “You think that bozo would’ve helped you?! You are SOOOOOO lucky it was me and Lacey that saw you two instead of a teacher!”
‘Lucky’ was definitely not the word Kieran wanted to use. In spite of his sister’s obvious frustrations, he found himself mulling over her words and shaking his head. “He wouldn’t have let me fall.”
“WHAT?!”
“He wouldn’t.” Kieran repeated, jerking his chin down in a firm and confident nod. Then he puffed out his chest and leered up at Carmine’s furious face. “And…next time there’s a storm, I think I’m gonna go back up there with him.” Then he took off at a run.
“KIKI! GET BACK HERE!”
And Kieran - who felt as if the sun was breaking through the clouds once more - only laughed as he got further away.