Guys! Guys! I've been working super uber overtime this past week to prepare a huge surprise for you all! :D Stay tuned! The big release will be September 1st, so please be sure to tune in then. Kind of hard to do a surprise with nobody there...
6
The metal of the roof popped as it buckled under the pressure. Warmed air bounced off it, wafting up higher than he had expected. Bewildered, elated, he pounded down again and again, heartbeat racing up to his head as the boat sunk and the ocean waves became small enough to be friendly bumps in the sea blue carpet. As he rose he could sense the air getting colder, but his exerting muscles warmed it about him, protecting him, as they secreted heat instead of sweat. The sky grew more and more globe shaped till it swallowed him, no longer a vast line where the ocean and it became one.
He became so enthralled with his newfound height that he almost forgot the ship beneath him. By the time he looked back down, it had sailed away from him and shrunk to little bigger than his shoe.
And the ocean had turned into a white speckled, blue slate, ready to slap the life from him.
His muscles locked up. People were one thing. Guns were one thing. Fire and speeding cars and killer bit beasts and assassins and rapist monsters were other things. Being hundreds of feet high in the sky with no parachute or anything but what felt like arms coming off his back to stop him from falling to his death-
But the moment he started to fall, a scream curling from his throat, a thick breath of air, like a second ocean unto itself, caught on his open wings. It pulled on his tail feathers and legs, pushing them up till they aligned.
And without any extra effort on his part, he started to glide.
It wasn't much different from when he had jumped off the cliff with Ayah. As he calmed himself and gathered his bearings, the uncomfortable ache of his still growing muscles came to him. He could feel the sun on his back, blazing and welcoming, and the pressure of the wind as it slipped past his wings like water.
Alright. Maybe he could get use to this.
Figuring he better keep close to the ship, he found himself maneuvering instinctually. A shifting of weight to the side. A tensing of muscles as his tail feathers turned. In no time the shoe-sized ship was beneath him.
Right. Land. Ships. Something.
His gaze turned to the horizons. His eyes watered more from the immensity than the air smacking them, as his heat pushed out against the oncoming air enough to protect them. He couldn't help but wonder what Tyson would have to protect him from the elements as he turned in a slow, ginger circle. What he thought would be a quick perusal of the horizon turned out to be much more. Anything could be swallowed up in so much blue.
He continued to circle, finding it a safe and easy way to descend while keeping up with the ship. When it had grown to the size of a car, movement caught at the corner of his eye. Wondering how anything could stand out when the whole ocean was a mass of movement, he tried to level out and hold still. Instantly, staying in the air became that much harder, as gliding turned to heavy pounding. For a moment, he couldn't see anything, as his own rising and falling made it hard to keep his sight on one spot, but then something much darker than the ocean and tiny burst forth from the blue and back down. A dolphin?
Curious, and eager to shift back into gliding, he dipped towards it, allowing the wind to level him out flat once more.
The ocean came up to him a lot quicker than he wanted when he was actively diving. Just as he was floundering a bit to slow down and figure out how to circle around such a quick object, he caught a flash of dark gold.
Could it be?
He stopped trying to slow himself, drawing closer and closer to whatever arched across the waves. Just as he got close enough to see the dips between waves and their caps, the dark thing launched out into the sun.
A person. A blond, freckled, familiar person, wearing what appeared to be a very unfamiliar, dark colored body suit.
Kai pulled up short.
"Max?!"
They splashed back into the depths. When they didn't come back up, Kai began to worry that Max had outstripped him and readied his already protesting muscles for a heave back up into the sky.
Then the wet, dark gold blond head popped out from the crescent of a wave directly below him.
"Kai!" It called up. "I thought that was you! You're beautiful!"
"What are you doing out here?" He half yelled, half panted back. "Scratch that, I'll meet you at the ship!"
"So there is a ship out here?"
"Yes!" And hoping that was enough to get him to follow, Kai fought his way back up, far out of reach of even the threat of the waves. The thought of their watery, cold touch made him shudder. He couldn't shake off the image of one coming up and swallowing him down whole, like a sticky goo monster.
By the time he got up to comfortable gliding height, his entire torso hated him. He never realized so much pressure of flight came onto his torso rather than his wings. He'd have to change his exercise regime.
Luckily the ship hadn't gotten as far as he had feared. Angling himself towards the now obviously ship sized shape, he tried to make his descent more gradual this time, though his smarting muscles didn't seem to want to cooperate.
He was just beginning to fear falling to his demise when he finally reached the deck of the ship and...crash landed.
When everything stopped spinning and beating up on him, he heard the clack of claws as Tyson ran across the deck to him. Kai feared the worse. With so many new joints to worry about, his old training in falls hadn't accounted for much.
"Kai! You okay?"
Well, let's see, he thought scathingly as he opened his eyes to giant wings and an arm and some blood and a tail feather tangled up in his leg-but at least the leg was in the right direction.
Tyson reached him with a slap of tail and scales. Kai accepted the hand he reached out to him and used it to rearrange his legs beneath him (carefully avoiding stepping on his own wings) and pull himself up. His ankle throbbed something nasty, but it wasn't broken, and, surprisingly, his wings had protected him from the brunt of the scrapes he could have gotten.
"Landing is always the hardest," said Tyson, gifting Kai with his trademark cheeky grin.
"I thought you were supposed to be sleeping." Kai snatched his hand back.
"How could I sleep after that huge boom you made on the roof? And then you just got higher and higher-man, it was sick!"
Kai gawked at him. Tyson's stamina had always been something to be reckoned with, but this was unreal. Not much had stopped Kai from sleeping the day after his change.
Something heavy, hard, and wet landed on the deck behind Tyson with a ship-shaking boom. Tyson swiveled with a shout of fright.
"What the-"
Max straightened, and Kai got another pang of jealousy as he noticed the other had landed on his feet without so much as a stumble. But once Kai got a good look at the boy's...feet, he could understand. Like Tyson's, Max's feet had left the domain of human shape and gone reptilian, but instead of the long toes or moving to walk on the balls of his feet like Tyson, Max's feet had turned broad and heavy, with the heel melded firmly to the ground with the rest of the foot, and each short toe was armed with small, utilitarian claws. The navy-purple scales built up his thicker, load bearing calves, growing into thick, plate-like knee caps before vanishing beneath the edge of violet swim shorts.
The rest of Max's body had changed as well, broadening till he had the width of a natural borne body builder, with scales covering where there had once been body hair. His stomach, chest, neck, hands, and most of his face had retained their human skin, but Kai could also see more heavy, plate-like scales peeking out over his shoulders. He wouldn't have been surprised to see that Max's back had become a shield of hefty, almost black armor.
Tyson's jaw dropped. "M-M-Max?"
"Tyson!" Max crowed, as though they were merely meeting for the beginning of another beyblading season. "You've got a tail!"
"Max," Tyson croaked back. "You look like tank."
"Tut tut. I've always been a tank."
Kai didn't have to see them to know that Tyson's eyes were tearing up as he flung his arms open and launched himself across the deck. Max was as surprised as Tyson when his new, dragonic legs took him six feet before he all but crashed onto the turtle's neck, long tail up and about for the first time and flailing like a metal death whip.
"Am I ever glad to see you, Maxie! Oh man, Maxie buddy ol' pal, oh gosh, I just-I just can't-"
"Air-Tyson-"
"I can't believe you swam here-that's so freaking cool!"
Kai had reached them by this point and yanked on the dragon's shoulders. "Tyson, give him some air!"
Tyson fell away readily, but Max didn't look too choked out. Just worn, as anyone should be for crossing an ocean.
"Technically I didn't swim all the way," said Max, shaking out his wet mop of hair. "I hitched a ride on a nice whale, think it's a humpback. Then I stopped at one of the various pacific islands around here, which just so happened to have a phone I could use to call mom and make sure your location hadn't changed-and get some sleep too, mind you. I can't breathe under water, persay."
Tyson gave Max a strange look. "Aren't you a turtle?"
"Turtles don't have gills, Tyson."
"But they live in the ocean and are, like, super slow aren't they? They can't get to the surface and down quick enough, they'd drown!"
"You're an idiot," said Kai, who took his own turn to give his teammate a heavy pat on the back in place of a hug. An easy smile pushed against his lips, small, but still there. "You had me worried."
Max beamed at him. "Aw, that's down right sweet coming from you, Captain. But, side note, you know this ship's sinking, right?"
Tyson and Kai stared.
Max flapped his hands, as though to wave away an offense. "No big deal! No big deal! Every boat's got safety rafts or something. We'll blow those up and I'll get you to the nearest island-and it's not like it's sinking all that fast anyways. I mean, you've been on here for how long?"
"Where's Ayah?" Kai asked, back in business. He could see to his scrapes and ankle later. He should have known this safety would only be short lived.
"Said she was going to go take a nap," said Tyson. Kai only took a few limping waddles before Tyson caught his arm. "I'll get her. You just get off that foot."
Kai didn't argue. It wasn't like he was all that comfortable talking to her anyways.
As Tyson ran off with much romping and thumping of tail and claw, Kai asked Max, "How far would you say the nearest island is?"
"Uh, the one I just left was only a half-day's swim away. Might take a day pulling something."
Not to mention Max did looked worn down. It hadn't been all that long since he had transformed as well.
"You feeling up to this?" Kai asked.
"Well, now that you mention it, I could probably sleep a week without too much of a problem. You wouldn't happen to have any food on you, do you?"
"Up the stairs, second door is the kitchen. Whatever you can find. Third door down is a room with a bed. Get rested. I'm going to catch up with the other two and get us a boat." He inwardly cringed and warmed at the memory. "I happen to know where the rafts are."
P.S. To ZH and all my other lovely guest reviewers: I can't respond to your review if you remain a guest reviewer and don't get an account. x.x I really want to talk to you and thank you formally, but I don't really believe in long author's notes to respond to all the reviews. I think it takes away from/interrupts the story.
