This Doesn't Mean I Like You
D'jok's champagne glass was empty, and he did not feel like getting himself a top up.
The drinks table was, after all, back inside the room, by the far wall, and in present company he much preferred standing completely still (and silently!), pretending to be invisible.
He side-eyed the other balcony dwellers, each stood as awkwardly as he, staring out into the night sky with blank and bored expressions. For Galactik football captains they each seemed a bit uninspired, he thought, though then again, what was he doing differently? In fairness to Kernor, Woonnabora, and Fulmugus, they had been thrust into the 'Captain's Suite' against their will just the same as D'jok had, forced to mingle with the other team captains in some contrived effort to create inter-team unity. They, like D'jok, cared nothing for the friendship part of this 'Pre-Season Tournament of Friendship'. The tournament aspect was the much more appealing segment of that terrifyingly cheesy title. And in present time, the only thing that was really appealing to D'jok was the party going on next door, where the rest of the teams were no doubt thoroughly enjoying the spread of food, the free drink, and booming dance music.
In an attempt to distract himself from the temptation of simply forgoing inter-team friendship and running back to the main party hall to be with his team, D'jok turned like the others to look out upon the city, his elbows resting on the cool metal railing.
The Lightnings' planet of Xzion certainly looked cool. Blue high-rises, much like the one D'jok was currently in, pierced upwards into the atmosphere, the glimmering blue of the city spread every way into the horizon. The sky itself seemed so high up, so far away, and was littered with the swirl of cobalt coloured clouds, the thick darkness of the night sky sporadically peeking itself through. And the air. The air was strange. D'jok felt like he could almost taste electricity. It was light, tingly, and made his skin feel funny.
A loud bang and then the definite sound of muted laughter, heard just above the music, made each of the captains jump and turn.
Kernor narrowed her eyes and was the first to speak since the Wambas' captain Woonnabora's attempts at conversation had been shut down when they first entered the lounge. "That's it! I'm going back in there. I bet my girls are having a drinking competition... Without me!"
With this exclamation the Ryker marched back into the brightness of the captain's suite and then disappeared through to the main hall, music drifting in and then out with the open and close of the double doors across the room.
The remaining three captains shared looks.
Downing the rest of his champagne, Fulmugus, the white haired captain of the Shadows (looking rather dapper in his tuxedo) spoke in his ghoulish tone, "I bet there's more alcohol in there."
And with that, he left.
Woonnabora, after watching him leave, turned and simply gave D'jok a shrug, before jogging after them.
This was no inconvenience to D'jok. Happily, the boy made his way over to the doors, and after nabbing himself a quick olive from the nearby table, made his way through.
Immediately he bumped into the chest of Warren, suited up and looking somewhat disconcerted.
His eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room and his ears to the loudness of the music, D'jok blinked a couple times in a regaining of his senses, before realising what had happened.
"Oh, Warren, hey! The rest of the captain's, err, decided that the party just sounded too fun to miss anymore of… I guess."
Warren smiled down at D'jok and turned to survey the party. Each of the teams seemed to occupy their own portion of the hall, with the Snowkids dancing in one corner, the Wambas in another, the Rykers at the bar, and the Shadows by the food tables. The rest of the Lightnings simply stood in the centre of the hall, awkwardly talking and seemingly wanting to, but not being quite brave enough to, interact with the other teams.
"I was actually just coming to fetch you guys out of there," Warren said, glumly observing the situation before him, "I was hoping your bonding might have made the teams more likely to talk to each other. Apparently not."
"Don't worry Warren!" D'jok said cheerfully, eager to appease his footballing hero, "The Snowkids are friends with the Wambas, sort of. And The Rykers aren't so bad! Neither are the Lightnings!"
"I think you missed a team there, D'jok," Warren noted with a hint of both amusement and disappointment lining his voice, "But never mind. Above all else this tournament is about keeping fit in the pre-season. The friendship angle was just a nice idea me and the manager had."
D'jok internally scolded himself for missing out the Shadows (though an even more internal part of him did not regret it), and before he could reply to Warren, Micro-ice's calls sounded out above the music.
"Hey, D'jok! Hey D'jok, check this out!"
D'jok looked to his left where the Snow Kids resided to see Micro-ice juggling three glasses of some kind of blue alcoholic drink, rather impressively making a bit of the liquid fly out of the glass and into his mouth each time a glass flew over his head. The rest of the Snow Kids clapped him along as they watched. D'jok, despite trying to keep cool for Warren, burst out into loud laughter, and he laughed even harder when the show started to go south, with Micro-ice losing control and the glasses ending up shattered on the floor and the drink staining Micro-ice's jacket.
"Micro-ice, you are such a joker!" D'jok laughed as he made his way over to his team, forgetting about Warren (then remembering about Warren, then turning worriedly in the hopes that he had not offended Warren by sort of rudely walking away, then calming down upon seeing Warren give him one last smile before he himself left to talk to his squad).
The night from then on definitely improved in quality. D'jok, for the next couple of hours, danced away with his squad, consumed untold amounts of alcohol, and generally unwound. After drunkenly getting into a dance off with Micro-ice (which according to the judge, Lune-Zeara, he handily lost, though he himself had his doubts) D'jok next found himself leaning his back against the bar, with Aarch, Warren, and Woowamboo standing around him, talking about the tournament.
"Yes, it's quite a novel idea. I'm surprised it's not been done as much in the past," Aarch was saying, arms folded behind his back.
"Yes, it's great for fitness purposes, we thought," Warren answered after taking a swig of his drink, "And it keeps your standard of play competitive. It's one thing to train alone with your team, or with imitations of the real thing in your case, Aarch, but it's another thing to play against actual top teams."
"A good idea as long as there's no fouling going on in the matches, eh?" Woowamboo teased in his thick accent, nudging Warren on the arm.
"Well we did want the tournament to foster friendships between teams, but for the most part everybody seems to be sticking to their own groups," Warren answered with a wry smile.
Aarch went to speak, and at this point D'jok zoned out of the conversation because he found it boring.
His eyes wandered down the bar to where the Shadows were, all in the process of taking shots of a thick looking colourless liquid. All, that was, except for Sinedd, who stood with his Shadows team members looking rather grumpy. Indeed, Sinedd had no drink in hand at all. D'jok felt a compulsion to ask Sinedd why exactly he wasn't joining in with his team's shot taking, thinking that his question could perhaps be peppered with a bit of infantilising mocking along the lines of Sinedd not being able to handle his drink, but he resisted, as Aarch's warnings before they arrived on the planet to not start any drama with Sinedd resurfaced in his mind.
D'jok's eyes instead floated across the room to where Artegor Nexus stood, talking to the Wambas manager Bakura, and then they drew to Aarch, right by his side, then back to Sinedd. Then, something clicked. What was it that he had heard Aarch talking to Artegor about that one time? Something to do with the smog, and how it made you sick? It's why Aarch left the Shadows back when he was a player. It was the same thing that Sinedd had encountered all those months ago during the Shadows versus Xenons quarter-final. That was probably it, D'jok realised, the boy was still not quite right yet from his issues with the smog, he was going teetotal for health reasons.
At that moment Sinedd's eyes snapped upwards, as if he had felt D'jok watching him, and the boy glared D'jok's way for a good few seconds. D'jok had attempted to make it look like he hadn't been looking, but upon realising he had been caught, and also because he was eager to not look weak to Sinedd, he returned a steely glaze. Across the bar their stand-off continued, probably going on a bit longer than either boy really wanted, but as they both refused to be the first to back down, it dragged on.
Until Aarch's stern call of, "D'jok," pulled him back to the conversation he was perhaps supposed to be involved in.
"Ys'coach," D'jok slurred, turning quickly, eyes wide, pretending to be innocent.
Aarch, brow furrowed, glared at D'jok a moment longer, then spoke quite normally, "Warren here was just explaining something about the weather here on Xzion that I think you should know."
"Yes," Warren nodded, turning his attention to D'jok, "I was just telling your coach here that our planet is quite prone to electrical storms. You saw the clouds when you were above the atmosphere, I'm sure. And I was just explaining that during really severe electrical storms something odd happens to the flux, all fluxes being used on Xzion."
"What happens?"
"The storm seems to disrupt flux usage. Not sure how but there's science behind it. The atmosphere on the planet somehow blocks the fluxes from other planets from working here, or at least disrupts them, though it also massively strengthens our own flux, the charge."
"See, it's how the Lightnings always top their group during the preliminaries," Woowamboo said with a mischievous wink, "They schedule all their home games in sync with their storms!"
Warren laughed, "Well actually the storms can be quite unpredictable. They come out of nowhere half the time. For the real big storms though, my people can feel it coming. There's electricity as well as invisible remnants of the charge floating in the air. For example, I can tell you right now for a certainty that they'll be a big storm coming soon. Not sure when, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after, but it'll come."
"But we're playing the first friendly tomorrow, against the Shadows!" Aarch remembered, and D'jok, who in a drunken stupor had been staring into the second head of Warren that had formed, turned dramatically to his coach.
"That's right!" he enthused.
"Don't worry," Warren placated, "If a storm hits you'll play with the stadium roof activated, and you can play, just without activating your fluxes. It should be good practice actually."
At this point D'jok got bored again with the conversation, so as Aarch made the comparison between the crystal dust cloud that severed the Shadows connection with the smog to these storms, the red-head wandered off, finding his way over to Thran, Ahito, and Mark.
There he rested with Ahito a bit, on the chairs by the wall.
Closing his eyes, D'jok almost felt himself drifting off, but a nearby heated conversation awoke him.
Standing by the dip, Artegor and Sinedd seemed to be having a disagreement. D'jok couldn't quite pick up on what exactly they were discussing so vehemently (he incorrectly assumed at first that it had something to with the dip; perhaps Sinedd had double dipped? That would have been so like him), but he heard Sinedd accuse Artegor of being weak a couple of times, and he also heard mention of the Xenons, Luur, and even, he believed, the Snow Kids.
Sinedd then, in clear anger, pulled away from Artegor, and pushing through a dancing Rocket and Tia (much to their outrage), made a beeline for the captain's suite.
D'jok, at this point, couldn't help himself. "Hey Sinedd!" he called out, "Where you going? Party not good enough for you?"
Sinedd turned and glared, made to carry on walking, but then apparently couldn't help himself too, and turned back around with a point D'jok's way. "No party involving the Snow Kids is too much for me, D'jok!" Aware of how silly his sentence sounded, Sinedd desperately added on, "Stay out of my business anyway, I saw you watching me and Artegor! Butt out, alright?"
Micro-ice popped up out of nowhere, in between the still seated D'jok, and Sinedd, pushing a finger into Sinedd's face. "Back off!"
Sinedd, at first surprised at the smaller boy's sudden appearance at the slightest sign of D'jok being argued with, growled and swiped at Micro-ice's outstretched hand. Disproportionately outraged by this, D'jok stood up and rushed over. "Watch it Sinedd, don't spoil this party just because you're still mad about losing to the Xenons."
D'jok had put together that this was what Sinedd was probably arguing with Artegor about, or something to do with it, and knew he could strike a nerve with the subject.
"Why you," Sinedd hissed through gritted teeth. He moved forwards into D'jok's vicinity, D'jok matching his glare again, and before Sinedd could do anything to start a proper fight, Artegor appeared, pushing himself between the two of them.
"What a ridiculous thing to start fighting about," The man hissed, talking to both Sinedd and D'jok, "I watched the whole thing. Must you always needlessly antagonise each other?"
"He started it," Sinedd croakily responded, which made D'jok unduly angry. Unduly, because, of course, Sinedd was correct.
"I don't care," Artegor said smartly, "Sinedd, go on off to your room. You'll need your rest."
"You're not my father," Sinedd returned venomously, not having picked up the care Artegor had, with guarding, just conveyed.
"Sinedd," Artegor said with a harsh whisper, clearly wishing that D'jok and Mico-ice were not privy to the conversation, "You're not well. You should go to bed."
Sinedd glared into Artegor's eyes for a moment, before stomping off towards the exit doors, Micro-ice and D'jok watching him with glee.
"I guess it was baby's bed time!" Micro-ice laughed, though he flinched when Artegor's head snapped down to look at him.
"You both have a match tomorrow," he said, "I know I'm no longer assistant coach of the Snow Kids, but perhaps you should be following my advice to Sinedd and going to bed yourselves. You wouldn't want to be too hungover for the match against my Shadows tomorrow, would you?"
Reacting to Artegor's authoritative manner, Micro-ice nodded quickly, "Yeah, you're right. Bedtime, sure, yes."
The small striker made his way slowly across the hall, keeping one eye on Artegor, and when Artegor had looked away back to D'jok, immediately started dancing, joining in on the Wambas' Wambassian shuffle dance that was going on.
D'jok meanwhile fixed Artegor a confident look. He was about to say something about taking orders from nobody, but when his stomach then gurgled and he felt the dreaded feeling of vomit shoot up his throat (thankfully to, unpleasantly, slide back down) he nodded slowly and trudged off in Sinedd's direction, to the exit doors.
After a short but hellish moment in which the room seemed to spin and spin and spin, D'jok fell rather quickly to sleep.
His dreams were not pleasant.
He saw visions of himself falling, crying out for help, that supernatural looking Xzion sky rending and swirling. He felt himself sweating, his mind reaching out for lucidity, desperate to return to the waking world, and then… laughter?
D'jok shot up. His bed sheets were soaked in sweat. He hated bad dreams, especially when they seemed so real.
As was customary after his nightmares, he went to speak to Micro-ice, to see if he was awake, but his best friend's laughter sounding out from the nearby balcony stopped him. D'jok looked that way, and through the closed glass door he saw Micro-ice and Whiwamboo, the white-haired Wambas defender, standing on the balcony, smoking a strange orange looking plant substance in a roll-up.
D'jok raised an eyebrow at the two of them, and only a few seconds later did Micro-ice notice D'jok awake in his bed. The boy almost leapt off his feet in shock and rushed over to open the balcony door, as Whiwamboo flicked the rolled up cigarette type thing off the balcony edge, before staring up at the night sky as if he was extremely interested in something.
"Oh, hey D'jok! Didn't know you were awake!" Micro-ice said in a faux cheerful manner, his eyes red and pupils dilated, "How long have you been up? Hahahaha!" He stopped his fake laughter when he noticed D'jok was not laughing, and after a short pause then asked again, more earnestly this time, "How long have you been up?"
"Don't worry, I'm going back to sleep," D'jok answered, flinging his head back down onto his pillow and turning his back on his friend, "And you should be going to sleep too, with the match tomorrow."
When tomorrow came so did the storm that Warren had predicted.
Pushing out of the stairwell and onto the top level of their hotel building, each and every member of the Snow Kids found themselves buffeted back by the strong winds. It took Aarch, at the back, to push forwards and stop the whole team falling backwards down the stairs.
"I sort of feel like being on the top of a skyscraper during an electrical storm is a bad idea, but that's just me!" Micro-ice jokingly exclaimed as the team managed to pool out onto the rooftop, their clothes soaking immediately underneath the torrent of heavy rainfall.
"I would be running to the ship, but as it is I can't even open my eyes to see where I'm walking!" Mark shouted back, taking a few steps forwards and into the back of Ahito.
"Well if you do get the chance, look up at the sky, it's beautiful," chimed in Yuki, who, with her arm in front of her face, was watching the show of pink lightning bolts dazzling up the darkened sky.
"Alright Snow Kids!" Aarch called as he, Dame Simbai, and Clamp moved to the front, "To the ship now. It's parked right ahead waiting to take us to the stadium!"
As a collective the Snow Kids trudged forwards, towards where the open doors of the Lightnings owned ship waited to whisk them away (a ship not dissimilar in design to the Snow Kids' own, though this ship was coloured the distinctive Lightnings blue that seemed so common on Xzion). Aarch reached the doors first, and through squinted eyes ushered each of the others in, before climbing on himself.
"Well now, that could rival an Akillian snowstorm for intensity," the coach commented upon closing the ship doors.
His comment was ignored, however, as his team were far too distracted by the fact that the Shadows team, their opponents for the day, were in the passenger ship already, seated and glaring up at the Snow Kids.
"The Shadows! We have to share a ship with the Shadows!" Thran gasped.
"Not too much of an inconvenience I hope, Thran," Artegor said, standing up and approaching Aarch, "There's plenty of room."
"Artegor. I had assumed the teams would be taking different ships to the stadium. What a pleasant surprise," said Aarch, moving forwards and patting Artegor on the shoulder.
"It seems even you, Aarch, are forgetting that this is a tournament of friendship. It's only natural that'd we'd be sharing passage to the playing field."
"No, of course," Aarch conceded, before turning to look at his team, "Well you lot. Don't just stand there looking dumbfounded, take a seat."
The Snow Kids, slowly, took the row of seats next to the door, and opposite the still glowering Shadows.
Soon enough the ship, piloted by a humanoid shaped robot named Larry who came to greet the passengers and give them an e.t.a of one hour, was zooming off through the sky, leaving the city and its glimmering blue beneath a grey of cloud and drizzle.
"You know, I don't think I feel so comfortable flying in this storm," Rocket commented, peering out of the window by his head to watch the cracks of lightning explode in the clouds above.
"You're not scared, are you Rocket?" Tia teased.
Rocket turned with a coy smile, "No, of course not. I just… worry is all."
"I'm sure it'll be fine Rocket, the pilot wouldn't fly too close to the storm clouds," Ahito put in, the Shadows opposite watching the conversation unfold.
"You sure about that? Kinda feels like we're in the storm clouds," Micro-ice added, biting his nails as he stared out the window.
"No, look Micro-ice," Mei said, turning and pointing upwards out of the window, "See all those dark blue clouds swirling about, way high up there? That's where the lightning is coming from. The sky is like, really high on this planet, and though we're flying in the clouds we're not flying close enough to the thunder clouds to be in any danger."
"Well actually Mei, you're right about the Xzion sky being higher than most other planets' skies, though I'm not sure that's exactly the right terminology, but you're wrong about us being in no danger from the thunder clouds. The xzion lightning is-"
"Clamp," Aarch said shortly, cutting off his friend mid-sentence.
Clamp, seeing the worried faces of both the Snow Kids and now also the Shadows, realised what he had just done. "Oh, err, but I'm sure we'll be fine, you're right."
The ship, for a moment, was quiet, save for the hum of its engines. Artegor then spoke out, interrupting everybody's thoughtful comprehension of their current predicament.
"The ship will be fine. Storms are quite common on this planet. I'm sure the pilot is used to them and crashes as a cause of them a rarity."
"Yeah, he's probably right," Micro-ice nodded, "And besides, if we get in trouble, we always have our flux, right? We can use that in times of trouble, can't we coach?"
"The flux society and league normally allow it, yes," Aarch nodded, but then added, "Though I hear from Warren that storms as powerful as the one happening right now often disrupt flux usage. Make it difficult for off-worlders to summon."
"Hey what? How are we going to play this match then?" Sinedd barked out. His team muttered agreements.
"Relax, Sinedd. We'll just have to play without usage of the flux. It'll be a good thing, for both teams, not a hindrance," Aarch replied.
D'jok caught himself before he made a comment about Sinedd not being good enough without the smog, but the boy, sat directly opposed, seemed to almost read D'jok's mind, as for some reason he glared forwards at the red head. D'jok glared back. Sinedd glared harder. D'jok matched his intensity. And then… a shake.
The whole ship tilted right and then steadied itself, and a metallic ripping sound screamed out from the vehicle's roof. The players yelled fearful cries, hands gripping hard onto the fabric of the chairs.
"Alright, alright everyone," Aarch said loudly, "Calm down, it was just a bit of turbulence. It's no big deal."
"Actually coach, space ships such as this one don't experience turbulence, at least not from planetary winds. It would take something quite powerful to knock this ship, and hearing that sound and judging from the weather, I'm guessing we just got hit by lightning."
"Alright Thran, thank you," Aarch said, not at all thankful.
Thran beamed as Ahito shook his head at his twin. "Helpful of you, bro."
"Well I'm not wrong," Thran returned.
"I'm starting to think you were right from the get go," Tia said to Rocket, her arm tightly wrapped to his, "I'm not feeling good about being in this ship."
Aarch turned to her, desperate to take control of the situation. "Tia it's fine, we all just need to calm down."
The ship shook again, accompanied by a shrill scream from Nihlis.
"Aarch, perhaps somebody should go ask the pilot to fly a bit lower? At least to calm nerves," Simbai suggested.
Before Aarch could reply both D'jok and Sinedd stood up, apparently both taking it upon themselves to complete this task. Everybody turned to look at them.
Slowly, and still matching eyes, the two strikers began to move down the ship and towards the doors of the pilot cabin.
The others still watched.
"What are they doing?" Rocket questioned the ship.
"They're in a glaring competition, and both are refusing to back down," explained Fulmugus.
"Yeah," Micro-ice nodded, "And D'jok's gonna win it."
"No, Sinedd will," Nihlis retorted.
Micro-ice turned to her, surprised at being challenged. "No, D'jok will!"
"Sinedd!" she hissed back.
"D'jok!"
"Sinedd!"
"Alright!" Artegor roared out, "Just shut up and-"
Sudden chaos.
Before anyone knew what was happening the ship was in a spiralled nosedive and bodies were flying around like balls in a tombola raffle. D'jok, at the front of the ship, felt his body smack against both metal and another body numerous times, and then, just as he managed to steady himself by holding onto a chair, a burst of freezing cold hissed and fizzed to his left. Then, he was gone.
"WAHHHHHHHHHH!"
D'jok spun uncontrollably through the air, buffeted by the winds and struggling to breathe. Through the rain he glimpsed the ship, above, swirling both of its own accord and because of his own twisting descent, and then, only cloud. For what seemed like an eternity longer he simply fell, his brain frozen in much a way his body literally was from the sheer cold, but then he came to, and desperately called upon the breath. He needed the Breath of Akillian.
But it wouldn't come. He tried and tried, but his flux had left him.
"NOOOOOO!"
D'jok shut his eyes.
It would be all over soon.
But then, something. Something happened. He felt his body shift trajectory, a pain as if he had just been hit, and his velocity significantly decrease.
He was hit by something, once, twice, a third time, each hit slowing his fall, and finally D'jok slammed down into something hard, and he was out cold… But alive.
A/N - Been what? 6 years since I last wrote GF Fanfiction. Feels good to return to these characters in some (sorta) serious manner. Hope you enjoyed and return for the next chapter! Thanks.