Air conditioning within the confines of a break room did feel good. They could at least be comfortable as the gathered engineers processed their princess being eight centimeters tall, probably closer to 81 millimeters, Lee figured. Along with making some introductions—including learning the name of the blond half-Doggle, Nicole—Spigot explained to them what happened in the Seed Kingdom.

Bret was the first to have a reaction other than to stare at Milro and Sophie in dumbfounded shock. It came in the form of him holding his chin and musing. "Well, this'll make my aunt happy. She's always calling for smaller government."

Everyone groaned and Tammy smacked him upside the head. He grabbed his head and glared at her. "Now's not the time for your stupid jokes," Tammy growled at him.

Emily glowered at Spigot and pointing to the princesses. "You could've told me this on the phone."

"So you could refuse and blab to Queen Yamul?" Spigot asked rhetorically. "I don't think so."

Emily planted her fists on her hips and exhaled a low growl. "I should've known something was wrong when you gave in to double overtime so easily."

Franklin crossed his arms and gave Emily the side-eye. "What happened to 'never look double overtime in the mouth?'"

Emily knotted her brow and scowled at Franklin. "It doesn't cover shrunken princesses!"

She turned to Spigot and pointed to Milro and Sophie. "And hiding them from Queen Yamul means you're technically guilty of kidnapping a member of the Royal Family and we're now all accessories."

That made Lee realize something. "What would the Thunder Queen do to us if she found out we were keeping this from her?" Ophelia asked, putting Lee's concerns into words.

The twins as well as Bret thought. Lee pictured Yamul staring down in shock at Milro standing on her desk in front of her. She suddenly looked up with a piercing glare, her teeth clenched tightly including some she would not have as a Beaver. A pair of searing, red beams shot from her eyes, striking Bret standing between Lee and Ophelia. The twins backed away in shock as the beams surrounded Bret in a jagged mass of energy alternating between reds and whites and blacks before disappearing to reveal a column of dark gray ash under his hat. The ash collapsed into a pile and his hat floated down gently.

"WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE VAPED BY THE QUEEN'S LASER EYE DEATH RAYS?!" Bret shouted, bringing Lee back to reality. Bret looked at all the eyes being on him. "Did I say that out loud?"

"Your mother certainly inspires fascinating thoughts in your subjects," Sophie said to Milro.

"That's one way to put it," Milro responded.

"No one is getting vaporized by the Queen!" Spigot stated.

"Too bad," Tammy said. "I would've sold tickets."

Spigot glowered at Tammy. He then turned it on Emily. "I haven't kidnapped them. I was told to escort them on their mission to the Seed Kingdom which I still am." He gave a shrug. "The scope has just changed."

Emily crossed her arms and side-eyed Spigot. "You're splitting those hairs mighty thin, Master Chief. And what do you think an atmospheric investigation will do?"

"I need to find a way to appease the Mother Tree," Spigot answered. "Since we can't change the weather with a snap of our fingers like she wants, I figure she'll be reasonable and accept an explanation for their current weather situation."

"And if she doesn't?" Emily asked.

"I'll cross that bridge if we come to it," Spigot said. "Anyway, I've brought you all out to the middle of weird cacti and outsized bobcats because I'm reactivating the Hurricane."

Lee was immediately interested. "The Hurricane?"

"The what?" Milro asked.

Spigot turned to Bret. "Care to show them?"

Bret turned to a door and waved towards it. "Right this way."

Nicole turned to the table Milro and Sophie stood on. "I guess I'm going to have to carry you, somehow." She looked at her dress and concentrated on her mantelet. "I know."

She opened one of the pockets in her shawl removed the few small items it held and opened the other to place them in. She folded the flap into the pocket. "You can ride in here." She reached down and Sophie stepped onto her gloved palm. She held open her pocket for Sophie to hop inside. She then did the same for Milro. "How's that?"

"Really comfy," Sophie answered.

Nicole smiled and turned to leave.

Lee watched Nicole leave with Alex, Emily, and Tammy. From the rear, her tail came out a hole in her dress, coming down past her long ponytail. Seeing her made him feel odd. His heart picked up its pace and he felt both light and yet like his legs struggled to hold his weight. It was like things just looked different with her in his view, more vivid.

"She's cute," Ophelia commented.

Lee glanced to his sister glancing to Nicole with a small smirk. "Don't let Andrea hear you say that."

Ophelia smirk broadened. "I knew it. You like her."

"W-what?!" Lee stammered. "I don't. I mean, I just."

"Please," Ophelia said. "Your heartrate is through the roof, your nervous system would put a Christmas tree to shame, and your gill slits are flushed."

Lee wrapped his hands around his gill slits which were warm to the touch, a place where blood flow increased in Tritons when blushing rather than their cheeks. Tritons could also sense electrical impulses—particularly those from the nerves of others nearby—so they could detect changes in neural signals.

"Don't get any ideas," Otto said. His glower was sharp and dark, like those guards shot at those who passed by their charge to let them know trouble would not be tolerated. "Lady Nicole left out that she's from the Dupré family."

"Dupré as in Duchess Georgette Dupré?" Ophelia asked.

Otto nodded. "The very same. Lady Nicole is her sole heir to the Pasturelands Duchy." He turned to Lee again with that withering glare. "So, forget being out of your league. A plebe like you isn't even playing her game."

Lee felt like he crashed back to earth, feeling his weight return and his heart sink. In a way, it did confirm that he liked her even at first sight. Yet, thinking about her made him feel anxious, like wishing for something forbidden.

"You're such a killjoy, Otto," Bonnie grumbled. "Let's check out this Hurricane thing."

Otto gave Lee one last glare, turning his head slowly than his body to follow Bonnie.

Lee just had to sit down. Ophelia sat next to him. "You all right, Lee?"

"Yes," Lee said. Then he admitted, "No. She's so pretty and that look in her eye." He rested his head in his hands. "I just can't get it out of his head."

Her eye color was the same blue as the open ocean. She was beautiful, but that was not it. There were plenty of pretty girls at the castle, but none of them made him feel like this. There was something beyond that: her personality, the way she carried herself, how she seemed to be interested in the weather as well. It could be a combination, but he could not make these thoughts into spoken words.

Ophelia rested her hand on his shoulder. "You're infatuated. It happens to the best of us."

"But what should I do about it?" Lee asked.

Ophelia stood up. "Well, you can start by talking to her."

Lee swallowed. "T-talk?"

Ophelia strolled away. "Yup. And contrary to popular belief, you won't burst into flames doing it."

Lee followed her. "But, what about her status? Why would she even care about someone like me?"

"You won't know unless you ask," Ophelia replied.

From Nicole's mantelet pocket, Milro was almost at the eye level of her normal height. Though, she tried to avoid looking down at the almost seven-story tower of purple dress they were towards the top of.

Bret led them into the adjoining hangar. Windows between the two tiers of the ceiling and in the main doors let in some light. There was a large object in it, long and cylindrical with wings extending from its sides. Bret flipped a large Y-switch next to the door to the up position.

Clunks echoed around them and rows of lights hanging down from the ceiling came on in sequence. They provided better illumination of the object. It sat on three sets of four giant landing gears, one under the nose and two where the wings joined the main body. The two wings each had a pair of motors built into them with four-bladed propellers.

"An airplane?" Otto asked.

"It not just any airplane," Lee said as he approached it, his broad smile becoming a huge grin.

He was right. It had a disk attached to the belly towards the nose. Poles extended out from the nose and the port wing while it as well as the starboard wing had collections of what Milro could only assume were instruments of some nature under it between the engines.

"This is the Hurricane!" Lee announced, his voice echoing through the hangar.

Milro could tell that by the word painted on the side of the hull in bold, black letters. To the stern of the word was a flag pole holding two ragged, red flags with black squares in the middle. The "i" was the only lowercase letter but the dot was a red circle with arms attending clockwise from the top and bottom. The whole hull was painted with a mural of a storm swept beach of frothing whitecaps crashing on it and palm trees bending with their fronds whipping in the wind under a dark gray sky. "Though, I don't remember anything about a custom paint job."

"We've added it over the past few years," Bret said.

"I like it," Milro said. She preferred more tranquil conditions in her work, but it effectively captured the turbulence of a storm striking a beach.

"We're particularly pleased to hear your approval, Princess," Bret said.

"The design seems familiar," Otto said. "I could swear I've seen it before?"

"This is based on the old WP-3D Orion atmospheric research craft our ancestors brought from Old Earth," Spigot explained. "They were going to use them to investigate the atmosphere of our new home."

Otto snapped his fingers. "That's where I've seen it. We have one parked in our aeronautics museum. I'm just use to it in its original NOAA livery." Along with the name and the mural, the Drop Kingdom sigil and the Cloud Generation Service seal were fainted on the tail fin.

"We based this on ours," Spigot said. "The initial plan was to refurbish and refit the original for active duty. However, we quickly discovered it would be closer to building a new plane from the ground up, so we saved on what it would take to pry it from the museum. Still, the design is at least seventy to eighty percent identical. The main differences are the props are now driven by electric motors rather than diesel engines and we reconfigured the interior."

Lee pointed to one of the many instrument packages under the wings as he walked along the length near wing. "All these instruments detect various atmospheric conditions like temperature, pressure, humidity, and even wind in three dimensions." He stopped and pointed to the disk. "That's a C-band, doppler radar, isn't it?"

"Yes," Spigot said. "There's another in the nose and an X-band in the tail has dual-pol beams."

Lee began bouncing on the balls of his feet. "This is what we're using? I'm actually going on an atmospheric investigation in it?"

"Settle down, Lee," Ophelia said.

Lee looked to her and settled back onto the full length of his feet.

"But I never heard about any of this," Milro said.

"She we built her during the Crisis," Spigot said. "The intent was to track the changes in the atmosphere brought on by our equipment failing and look for a cause."

"That's why," Sophie said. "You were only ten or eleven at the time."

"Unfortunately, by the time she was mission ready, it was clear the Blessing of the Sun weakening was the cause and things had pretty much gone to hell already. We put her in mothballs here once things were restored to normal."

Spigot turned to Bret. "Speaking of which, is she ready to go?"

"She's been kept mission ready since she got here, Master Chief," Bret reported with a salute. "In fact, the fuel cells have had their electrolyte and cathodes replaced yesterday. I topped off the hydrogen tanks after you called. You just need to give the word and we're off."

"Then the word is given," Spigot said.

"What word?" Franklin called out.

Franklin strolled into the hangar staring at the tablet in his hands. "Sorry about ducking away, I had to make a check in. Anyway, what's going on?"

Franklin looked up from his tablet his eyes seemed to glass over—and not from his nictating membrane spreading over his eyes, something to be clear about with Beavers—as his mouth opened slightly. He let the tablet drop to his side in one hand pointed to the Hurricane with the other. "What is that?"

"It's an airplane," Spigot said. "It's why we're here."

Franklin bobbed his head in a nod. "Right…" He glared at Emily. "You said nothing about a plane."

"It's a direct atmospheric investigation, Frank," Emily said. "That tends to mean being in the atmosphere. What did you expect?"

"A balloon like ninety-nine percent of aircraft in the Wonder Planet," Franklin stated.

"Fixed-wing craft are better for atmospheric investigation," Lee said. "They're faster and less vulnerable to atmospheric turbulence."

"And what's so different about an airplane from a balloon?" Emily asked. "They both go into the air."

"An envelope filled with lighter than air gas keeps a balloon afloat." Franklin pointed to the Hurricane. "What voodoo keeps that hunk of metal airborne?"

"It's not voodoo," Lee retorted. "The shape of the wing causes the air moving above it to accelerate compared to what passes underneath. The faster moving air creates a local region of low pressure above the wing compared to below it. Once the difference in pressure between above and below the wings is equal to or greater than the weight of the plane, it flies. It's the same principle as balloons just achieved a different way."

"If you need more than one sentence to explain it, I don't want any part of it," Franklin replied.

"Really, Frank?" Emily groaned. "You're a man of science and technology."

"My computer dying won't take me with it," Franklin retorted. He pointed to Bret. "And Mighty Mullet over there is the pilot? He can't even operate a shirt properly!"

"Hey!" Bret responded and pointed to his shirt coming out from under his jacket. "This is a fashion choice."

"There's no way in hell you're getting me on that death trap," Franklin declared. "I'll provide support remotely."

"The computer specialist needs to be on board," Spigot stated.

"Then find yourself another computer specialist." Franklin turned towards the man door.

"For the love of God," Spigot grumbled, massaging his muzzle. "We don't have time for this."

"I got this, Master Chief," Emily said.

Emily took Franklin by the arm. "Now hold up, Franklin." He turned to her and seemed ready to rip his arm for her grasp, but she tightened it. "How can you just walk away?" Emily asked.

She pointed to Milro and Sophie. "Our crown princess and the oldest princess of our closest ally have been subjected to terrible and humiliating curse." She did not have to put it that way. She pointed to Franklin. "They're counting on us to appease the Mother Tree. This is a moment we were built for."

She clenched her fist. "We're Beavers, the race that solves problems. Our ancestors didn't just win the West, we remade it in our own image. When the colonizers came for us, we colonized them."

"We still lost our home world in the end," Franklin pointed out.

"Regardless, it's moments like this our race yearns for—burns for. It's when we're called to answer the age-old question." Emily jabbed Franklin in the chest with her finger. "Are you a Beaver, or are you a muskrat?"

Franklin straightened his posture and puffed out his chest. "I'm a Beaver, of course."

"That's the spirit!" Emily cheered.

Franklin took a step away. "Which is while I'll find you someone else real quick."

Emily scowled and grabbed him by the collar. "Get back here!" She dragged him towards the Hurricane.

"No!" Franklin moaned as Emily dragged him. "Squeak, squeak, squeak; or whatever sounds muskrats make!"

The most nerve-racking operation of an airship is parking it horizontally inside a hangar. With no landing gear and a limited clearance, it had to be hovered just centimeters off the ground to slip under the door frame while not bouncing off the ground. Yet, Otto had done it multiple times in his training to be the King Barbardo's pilot.

He crept towards the tall hangar, meant for balloons with their envelopes. He watched the camera view from the top of the King Barbardo envelope as it approached the hangar door, almost level with it. Almost level, as it passed several centimeters below. Really, it was his length that was more of a concern as the bow approached the far wall. He slowed it to a stop, coming within centimeters of the wall.

Otto hit the button on his radio. "Am I completely within the hangar?"

"You're comfortably in," Alex responded through the speaker. "Can you turn around?"

Otto smiled. "Watch this."

He spun the helm to starboard. The King Barbardo turned clockwise in place, taking advantage of the roughly square shape of the hangar. He had it perfectly centered as he cleared the side walls. He caught the helm and brought it to starting position. The turn slowed and stopped with him facing squarely out the hangar door.

"I'd like to see that bush pilot do that," he mused to himself.

Otto settled the King Barbardo to the floor and powered it down. The electric motors whirred down and all the instrumentation went into standby mode. He headed for the door, taking out his key for the security interlock.

He met Nicole at the door. She patted at her waist pocket.

"Lady Dupré, I didn't realize you were onboard." Otto would not have been as cavalier if he knew he had a passenger.

"I was just picking up some things I did not want to leave behind," Nicole replied. "And held on for the ride."

The left out onto the wing. Otto inserted the key into the primary lock and turned it to activate the security interlocks. The King Barbardo was secure.

The primary hangar doors closed, so they headed for the man door next to it. Out on the tarmac, Otto noticed Nicole's eyes wander. He followed her gaze to Lee and Tammy out on the tarmac discussing something with Alex. Nicole apparently realized he had noticed and faced forward.

"Something have your interest?" Otto asked.

"No, nothing," Nicole replied as she picked up her pace towards the hangar holding the Hurricane.

Lee and Tammy headed to the Hurricane, its propellers turning as it was ready taxi to the end of the runway. The doors to its hangar closed and with Tanya and Barry on the way to relieve Bret from watching the base, everything was ready.

Access to the fuselage was by a blue and white ladder leading to the door in the port side. Lee took off his hat as he entered, and would need to keep it off when he stood as the cabin was not much taller than him. Tammy smacked the button next to it. The ladder folded and lifted up to retract into the plane. The door closed and sealed.

Tammy took her seat at the remote sensing and payload station with a rack of dropsondes and a tube coming out of the floor they would go into. Behind a cabinet separating them, Nicole sat at a table Milro and Sophie stood on next to the galley—which was a microwave, some cabinets, and a counter—and a pair of bunks. That and a door to a single head in the very back was the extent of the amenities on this craft.

Lee was tempted to sit with Nicole. However, that feeling of dread returned. He was so far below her station, and he was afraid of insulting a lady of such status and sophistication. "We'll be departing shortly," Bret's voice came from the speakers. The plane also began to move towards the end of the runway. That made Lee's mind up for him.

Lee headed up the cabin. Emily wrapped duct tape tightly around Franklin and the back of the chair at the computer station. Franklin looked to him, struggling against the impromptu restraints. "Help, I'm being shanghaied!"

"Aren't all of us?" Tammy asked from her station.

"I thought we were friends, Emily," Franklin blubbered.

"We are, which is why I'm doing you a solid," Emily replied. "This is exposure therapy."

"I think you forgot the part that you're not supposed to put the patient in actual danger!" Franklin tried to throw himself forward to get the tape to relent.

"It's not like a balloon crash leaves you any less dead," Ophelia said from one of the weather stations. "Well, unless you're the Sunny Kingdom princesses."

"That's just how you land an Icarus-class," Alex said from the navigation station at the front of the cabin.

"It's not just the crashing out of the sky," Franklin said. "When airships turn and rise and fall, they stay level. Airplanes pitch, yaw, and roll all over the place. They even tip up when takeoff and land. The very floor moving under me makes we wanna hurl."

Lee sat at the weather station on the other side from Ophelia in front of Franklin, putting his hat back on. "I thought Beavers were incapable of regurgitation."

"Which makes it even worse!" Franklin cried.

Emily groaned and shook her head. "You can cut him loose once we're airborne." She held the microphone on her headset as she headed to the front of the cabin and the flight director's station opposite Alex's navigator station. "The computer specialist is secure."

"So, did you talk to her?" Ophelia asked Lee.

Lee only shook his head in response. Ophelia groaned at this. "Come on, Lee: nothing ventured, nothing gained."

"But she's royalty," Lee started to say and realized he went too high, "I mean nobility. Either way—"

"I'm not saying get down on one knee and propose," Ophelia said. "Just talk with her and get to know her. It seemed like we were going to make a connection back there over the weather."

Lee looked back. The design of the cabin kept him from seeing Nicole, but he knew she was there with the princesses. "I don't know."

Emily looked back at where Franklin was restrained and got an idea. She turned to Alex. "Can you plot a course so we do a hard bank shortly after takeoff?" she said quietly.

"You got it," Alex replied and gave a thumbs up.

Bret turned them around once they got to the end of the runway to face down the long strip of asphalt. He picked up the preflight checklist with one last item to check off. "Gust locks." He flipped the switch for them. "Disengaged. And that concludes our preflight checks." He signed at the bottom and handed it to Otto. "First time in a fixed-wing?"

Otto took the clipboard and signed. "I got a couple hundred hours in Pegasus-class priority transports which are roughly based on the Orion."

He lowered the clipboard and looked to the decorations of the cockpit. A half-Beaver Hula doll sat on top of the control panel and pair of giant, red, fuzzy dice hung from the controls above their heads. He picked up one of the dice and scowled at it. "They were even as tacky in their adornments as this most of the time."

"Hey, those are original equipment," Bret said, "and important turbulence monitoring instruments."

Otto let the die go. "They even use the same excuse."

"They were Barry's idea," Spigot said from the flight engineer's chair between them, "and Tanya rolled with them."

A Riviera drove across the runway. "Speaking of Tanya," Spigot mused.

Spigot's phone rang. He took it out and opened it. "Hey, Tanya, sorry for calling you back in on such short notice."

"It's not a problem, Jerry," Tanya's voice came from the phone, Bret able to hear. "I didn't have much in the way of weekend plans anyway, so Barry and I are happy to hold down the fort. Though, what are you doing with my pilot and my plane?"

"Technically, it's my plane," Spigot said. "We're going to use it to investigate the rain situation in the Seed Kingdom."

"Since when do you do anything related to the Seed Kingdom?" Tanya asked.

"It's, uh, on behalf of the princess." Spigot tugged at his collar. "Speaking of which, the King Barbardo is stored in the tall hangar. It's locked down, so just keep an eye on it."

"Do I want to know why you're hiding the Windmill Kingdom's flagship on my base?" Tanya asked.

"You really don't," Spigot said.

"I see," Tanya said. "Well, happy hunting, Jerry. See you when I see you."

"One can hope." Spigot closed his phone and returned it to his pocket. "Get us out of here before Tanya gets curious and costs herself plausible deniability."

Bret turned to his readings which were all good. "This is the moment I was born for." The course was laid in from navigation with an interesting maneuver at the beginning.

Bret adjusted his microphone. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be taking off in a few moments."

Milro and Sophie looked out the window at the table. "This is so exciting!" Sophie declared. "This is my first time taking off in a fixed-wing." She turned to Milro. "What about you?"

"Uh…same," Milro said.

The plane suddenly moved forward. Milro momentarily lost her balance. Nicole held her hands to catch her and Sophie should they fall. However, they both stayed on their feet.

Through the window, the landscape began to move as they accelerated down the runway. The soft whir of the motors increased in pitch as they spun the propellers faster. Although it was her first time on a fixed-wing craft, Milro knew they built up speed on the ground before rising into the air.

They traveled faster and faster. They were already traveling faster than any airship Milro had been on. Then, the ground seemed to fall away and everything tilted upward. A moan came from Franklin towards the front. There was the feeling that the craft was no longer supported by the ground. Then, there was the sound of hydraulics and a "thunk" as the landing gears retreated into the hull and doors closed behind them.

The ground continued to drop away, the details becoming smaller and the world seeming to spread out before them. It was much like with the dust devil, though from the comfort of the cabin rather than being tossed around like a leaf.

"We're about to make a sharp bank to starboard," Bret announced. "Everyone hold tight."

The Hurricane suddenly tilted towards the right. Nicole held her hand for Milro and Sophie to lean against the ground far below came to fill the window. Franklin let out a blood-curdling scream as they turned to the right. Then, the plane righted itself and the view was that of the sky with the ground at the bottom.

"That's a new experience," Sophie said.

Emily smirked as she knew what was coming. After enough time to Lee to cut Franklin's duct tape bindings… "You did that on purpose, Emily!" Franklin's voice came out of her earpieces.

"Exposure therapy, Franklin," Emily replied. "We'll get you loving flying in planes yet."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Bret's voice came in, "we are heading towards cruising altitude. Did we lose anyone back there?"

"Yeah," Franklin stated. "My stomach and sanity are still on the tarmac."

"Well, they're gonna miss one hell of a trip," Bret said. "Seed Kingdom, here we come!"

Despite Franklin's initial protests, things quieted down as they achieved their cruising altitude and set course to the south for the Seed Kingdom. If fact, it was incredibly peaceful. Movies about the original planes depicted them as being noisy inside, but that was because their engines were diesel. The Hurricane—like all motorized vehicles and equipment in the Wonder Planer—had electric motors. They powered by solar panels on the roof and wings and hydrogen fuel cells. With fewer moving parts and no fuel combusting their noise was a gentle whir of the blades cutting through the air.

Though, it was not just the plane itself. There had been little if any turbulence once they left the boundary layer and the updrafts over the desert. It told Lee that the atmosphere was quite stable even before dropsonde data started coming in.

They had set to work on collecting data. At first, they needed to make sure the instruments were recording and doing so correctly. Still within the area where the atmosphere was well-studied, they ran their tests and everything was coming up as it should. They were ready for the information desert that was Sinker Swamp and then on to the Seed Kingdom.

They were recording atmospheric conditions and watching the shield of rain approach on radar. Lee had read the Hurricane typically cruised at around three kilometers, but they were after cloud physics data which meant a higher flight level at roughly five kilometers.

Tammy began to release dropsondes. Another difference from the original was the dropsondes now had two parachutes. The first was a cone chute to stabilize the descent before a second conventional chute opened about 100 meters above the ground to land softly like the radiosondes from balloon launches. The originals almost never released dropsondes over land, but they had to in their case.

The skew-T charts made from the dropsondes' data set numbers to the stability of the atmosphere with lapse rates anemic but moisture rich throughout the column as they came over Sinker Swamp and its evaporation and evapotranspiration. At last, what stupid politics had denied him was on Lee's monitor.

Emily walked back. "How are you all holding up?"

"The next time I visit the head," Franklin answered, "I'm pretty sure diamonds will come out."

"Too much information about the present state of Franklin's sphincter aside, how is data collecting going?" Emily asked.

"We're collecting plenty of data," Lee said, more specific. "Though, it looks like our assumptions are holding up pretty well."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Franklin asked.

"It means we still don't have a definite answer as to why so much rain is falling there," Lee said. "We'll need to sample the clouds directly to see if something is different."

Ophelia turned to Lee. "I can handle the ones and zeroes until then." She motioned back.

Lee looked back to wear he knew Nicole was sitting. He turned back to his screen, acting like he was not thinking about it.

Something grabbed his arm and pulled him from his chair. Ophelia had him. Lee grabbed his hat as standing up knocked it against the ceiling and off his head. She pushed him towards the back of the plane. He looked back at her. "What are you doing?"

"A favor," Ophelia answered, pushing him back.

Lee tried to resist, but Ophelia had leverage in the narrow fuselage where he could not slip to either side. She pushed him to the table where Nicole and the princesses looked up to him. Ophelia pressed on his shoulders to force him into the opposite seat.

She placed his hat on his head and straightened it. "Hi. I know you two were going to have a lovely conversation before all the insanity started. Lee wanted to talk to you once he had a moment, but my baby brother's really shy." She rubbed her cheek on his.

Lee hated when she put their birth order that way, especially when she was all cutesy about it. "I was born two minutes and fifty-seven point eight seconds after you, Ophelia."

Ophelia apparently ignored him and held her palms on the table in front of Milro and Sophie. "Do you wanna check out what we're doing up there?"

"It would be a pleasure." Milro picked up her skirt to step onto Ophelia's hand.

Sophie picked up her skirt to step onto her other. She turned back to Nicole and waved. "Have fun, Nicole."

The two tiny princesses sat on Ophelia's palms, letting their skirts puff around them. Ophelia was gentle bringing her hands up and turning to leave. Lee watched as she walked towards the front of the plane. Tammy had leaned forward in her chair to try to see. Ophelia shot her a glare, and she sat back and worked on her next dropsonde.

Lee sat back in his chair, staring at Nicole. Two conflicting sets of feelings whipped against each other in him. There was the dread that he had no business being in front of her. Then there was that light yet weak feeling as things seemed different around her. He gripped the edge of the table, trying to find words or something or than sitting there awkwardly.

"So, does Lee stand for anything?" Nicole asked.

"Excuse me?" Lee managed to get out.

"I mean, Bonnie's real name is Bianca, Alex is short for Alexander, and I heard Mister Santiago called both Franklin and Frank," Nicole explained. "So, is it short for Leroy or Leonard or what?"

"Oh, it's short for Laertes," Lee answered.

Nicole snapped her fingers. "I should've guessed that given your sister's name. Parents big Hamlet fans?"

"It's their favorite Shakespearian play," Lee answered. He figured he might as well reciprocate. "Do you have a nickname?"

"My mother called me Colette when I was little," Nicole answered. She looked to the side, frowning slightly. "She stopped when she took over as Duchess after my uncle died."

That reminded Lee he was speaking to the daughter and heir to a duchess. He tried to lean into the barely cushioned chair and looked away.

"Is something wrong?" Nicole asked.

Lee was silent.

Nicole lowered her brows and bent her mouth into a sharp frown. "Otto tried to scare you off with my mother's title, didn't he?"

Lee only nodded his head in response.

Nicole winced and held her forehead. "That resource-guarding son of a—" She sat up and took a second to regain her composure. "How about we forget the titles and the statuses and the last names. We're just Nicole and Lee, two kingdom workers having a polite conversation."

She took Lee's webbed hands into her gloved ones. The fabric covering them was smooth and cool to the touch. "So, why don't we talk about the weather? We seem to have it in common."

"Uh, okay," Lee said.

Nicole let go of his hands, folding hers in front of her. "So, have you found anything yet?"

"Well, it's mostly a confirmation of the general setup we thought was going on based on our surface and radiosonde data from the past week," Lee said. "We're in a blocking pattern. The continental low is too weak to close but a blocking anticyclone to the east is keeping it from opening completely."

"Continental low?" Nicole asked.

"During early spring in particular, the land of the Drop Kingdom heats more quickly than the surrounding ocean," Lee answered. "This creates a local area of low pressure that causes the wind to curve in a clockwise manner around the Drop Kingdom. They come from the south and west to the west of the Snow Mountains and turn to out of the north and east off the eastern and southern cloud towers. How opened and closed determines where the clouds go." Lee realized he was getting into the weeds. "I'm not boring you, am I?"

Nicole held her chin her hands. "Oh, no, I'm fascinated. Please, go on."

"When the low opens completely into a trough, the wind is more northerly, taking the clouds down to the Moon Kingdom where they hit the Christmas Mountains and rain themselves out. They rarely reach the other side which is why most the Moon Kingdom is a desert, but that rain charges aquifers that feeds their oases.

"When the low is particularly strong, it can close into a complete circulation and the wind will come out of almost due east over the southern Drop Kingdom to double over itself. Though, it will rise over those initial southwesterly winds because the air holds more moisture which makes it lighter. The change in direction with height causes the thunderstorms fed by said moisture from Sinker Swamp to rotate. We saw that last year with the tornado outbreak over the Meridian Prairie."

"What's happening now?" Nicole asked.

"Most commonly, the low is somewhat open, but that blocking anticyclone keeps the wind more from the northeast and the clouds traveling over the Seed Kingdom," Lee explained. "This is often their rainiest time of year, but the blocking pattern can become particularly stubborn and not lift until mid to late May like the year before last and the year before that."

"But something is different about this year," Nicole said. "I've never heard of them getting rain like this."

Lee rubbed his chin. "The issue is the extent and amount. The stability of the atmosphere is why we're seeing a stratiform rain shield rather than cumuliform or cumulonimbiform cells. Even then, I've never seen a shield so extensive and persistent. It's like the atmosphere is wringing itself out over the Seed Kingdom, putting down far more moisture than it should be able to."

"Which is why we're up here," Nicole said. She smiled. "You know so much about the weather. I've heard people twice your age who can't be as detailed as you."

Lee's gill slits burned at the compliment. "Thank you. I've been obsessed with the weather since I was little."

"So have I," Nicole said. "There was particularly bad windstorm when I was a little girl that blew over a huge, old tree on my family's land I thought would be there forever. It scared me to death, and I at first paid close attention to weather out of fear of something like that happening again, but it eventually became more and more with fascination."

"I can't say childhood trauma led me to weather," Lee replied. "It was more I liked how it was presented as numbers and colors and could be read into patterns at first."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Bret's voice came from the speaker, "we're approaching the Seed Kingdom and the cloud boundary. Have your weather instruments set to full scan or whatever."

"I should get to my station." Lee stood up.

"How about I come with you?" Nicole followed him to his station.

Lee sat down at his station. On one screen, he had the latest skew-T, lapse rates were still weak. The other was the radar which showed the shield of precipitation just ahead of them as a mass of greens bordered by blue with specks of yellow within it. The rain was not too intense, just expansive and constant.

"Is he nice?" Sophie asked from Ophelia's station.

Lee detected nerve activity skyrocket in Nicole as she turned stiffly yet quickly back to the princesses and Ophelia. "I mean, of course he's nice, and sweet, and—we were just talking about the weather."

She turned back to him, putting on a smile. "Why don't we check out crossing the cloud boundary for ourselves?"

Ophelia leaned back from behind her. "I can handle the data recording back here. Check it out with mark one eyeball."

"Alright." Lee set stood up and followed Nicole to the front and the cockpit.

The cockpit's lights were off to allow a better view out of the windows. Evening had fallen, the Blessing of the Sun entering eclipse. The sky was gold and orange to the east from light reflecting off the surface still under its light while the west was a deep purple. Ahead was the wall of clouds that appeared pinkish-gold in the fading light coming mostly from the side.

As a nimbostratus cloud, it was sheet-like in structure or rather lack of structure. It was essentially a flat layer of the atmosphere where water vapor condensed or deposited with little if any vertical motion in them. It sloped downward with distance, due to precipitation evaporating to saturate and cool the atmosphere below it.

"The first thing they taught me when I started flying is you never ever fly into a cloud," Otto said. "Not even a stratus sheet like this because you never know where there could be an embedded cumulonimbus tower."

"Well, clouds are where the interesting stuff happens, so in we go," Spigot replied.

"Alright, you big mass of water," Bret said in a faux accent. "You might have confounded princesses and chiefs, but now you face the Bretonator."

Otto turned to him. "This guy for real?"

"I've been asking myself the same question," Spigot replied.

Otto turned back to Nicole. "Lady, Dupré, what are you doing here?" He shot a glare at Lee. "And with him."

"We want to see the offending cloud for ourselves," Nicole answered. She shot him a glare and he faced forward.

"We'll be entering the cloud in ten seconds," Bret reported.

The cloud filled their view. Bonnie hovered behind Bret's chair to see. Again, because there was not much detail to stratiform clouds, so there was little in the way of details. However, as they approached, Lee thought it seemed more fibrous in its edging.

They entered the cloud and were surrounded by…