I was paired up with @photowizard17 for the @tagminibang! Had a wonderful time collaberating. I wrote the story and they drew the lovely art. Quite proud of what we did here :D
***
When Gordon was underwater, Virgil was a watcher. He hovered above the waves, eyes on the holographic marker that was a little yellow sub, on the telemetry numbers that marked breath and pulse. Virgil was a guardian, ready to tear apart the ocean if his little brother needed him.
But, to be quite honest, when Gordon was underwater, he rarely needed anything. Because when he was in the water, Gordon was a dancer. As a swimmer or in a sub, Virgil had seen him carve through the blue, had watched Gordon hone his skills his whole life.
But it was a very different thing, a rare thing, to be standing at his brother’s back, looking out the same windshield and watching the ocean rush by. Blue like his own world, his sky, but darker- and this world shook.
“Seaquake!” Gordon shouted, his eyes going sharp and grip tightening on the controls. “Virgil, buckle up!”
The warning came too late. The cockpit shuddered violently and Virgil grunted as he crashed into the wall before he could catch himself. Four made a sharp turn and sent him sliding the short distance across the glass floor before colliding with Gordon’s chair, the air blown out of him.
Virgil found himself staring through Four’s belly, his cheek pressed to the cool of the glass, high beams piercing through the dark.
They were in the worst place you could be during a seaquake, deep in an underwater mountain range with jagged rock walls jutting up high on either side of them. They were crumbling, and Gordon, with expert maneuvering, wove Four through the falling boulders, trying to climb for the surface.
It was loud.
There were screams coming from the passenger compartment, Gordon on the speakers telling them to stay calm. The deep rumble and sharp cracks as the world split apart around them. Deafening, even through the hull.
A foot nudged at Virgil’s side. “Virge! You okay?” Gordon asked, shouting over the destruction outside. His eyes were still pinned to the windshield, but there was a crease of worry between his brows that had nothing to do with piloting.
“I’m okay.” Virgil quickly assured him. Don’t make your little brother worry.
Virgil gripped the back of Gordon’s chair and hauled himself to his feet, securing a tether to keep him from pin-balling around the cockpit again, and pulling on his helmet for good measure.
Gordon chanced a glance over his shoulder, eyes meeting Virgil’s for a split second, making sure he was telling the truth.
“I’m fine.” Virgil repeated. There was a dull ache in his shoulder and another in his side, but nothing he couldn’t walk off. Gordon had bigger things to worry about.
Four gave another great shudder.
“Come on, girl, come on.” Gordon mumbled to his sub between clenched teeth, eyes flicking rapidly from windshield to readouts and back again.
Virgil kept a hand braced to the wall, trying to keep steady.
A seaquake was nothing like turbulence. Air had a direction, a forward movement, you could learn to ride even the strongest winds if you had the skill. But quakes had no rhyme or reason to them, they seized you and shook you like you were caught in the jaws of some animal. There was no riding one, only enduring it.
But eventually, because it always did, the shaking did stop.
“That was a long one,” Gordon muttered under his breath as the cockpit stabilized. He relaxed a fraction, but not by much. They were still in a danger zone.
Boulders began to hit the seafloor, and the silt rushed up and enveloped them. Visibility petered out to zero and Gordon was relying entirely on his instruments and instincts to climb them out of the fog.
A slab of stone fell into their path, appearing only as a shadow in the silt, plummeting for the seafloor and eager to take them all down with it. Gordon maneuvered Four through a narrow gap, only a few feet of open space on either side of them.
Piloting Four was highly instinctual, the controls wrapped around Gordon’s arms like armor, designed so he could feel the weight of the current. His movements were quick and sharp as he darted through the falling rock, but they had a rhythm to them, a tide of their own.
Gordon was an ocean unto himself, dual sided in personality and skill.
He was the obvious, the sparkling sunlit surfaces, the skipping waves and playful banter. And he was the hidden, the deep midnight blue in the depths, rarely seen in the light.
Well, they were far from the sunlight now.
The sub swerved sharply, and Virgil struggled on his feet. A new alarm tore through the cockpit and Gordon swore, voice all sharp edges and hard surface.
"Okay, hold on, I think we're in trouble." Gordon said, the words slipped out of him in a breath.
Virgil leaned over to glance Gordon’s instruments. There was a boulder three times the size of Four free falling towards them.
Virgil swore too.
Gordon’s eyes ticked quickly back and forth, from his instruments to his blinded windshield, imagining the things Virgil didn’t know how to, and he could see the gears turning.
“Hold on, I’ve got a stupid plan.” Gordon said.
“Better than no plan.”
For from his usual response when a brother said something along those lines, but right now the options were either stupid or crushed and Virgil had a preference.
Gordon kicked Four faster, sending her barreling upward, tight to the cavern wall, straight for the boulder. There was a narrow strip of negative space, was that what Gordon was aiming for?
Virgil bit his lip. It was too small.
They couldn’t even see the distance closing. Gordon had the numbers, the meters decreasing, Virgil had the cadence of the proximity alarm, screeching louder, louder, louder.
Staring out and seeing nothing was scarier somehow.
Gordon hit the speaker button for the passenger compartment. “Everyone brace yourselves! We’re gonna hit!”
The lights switched to a pulsing red as they neared and it matched the heart beat thumping wildly in Vigil’s ears and chest.
“Helmet!” Gordon shouted. Virgil snatched his brother’s helmet out of a locker and slipped it quickly over Gordon’s head.
This was all him. There was nothing Virgil could do. Adrenaline surged and it made his fingers shake.
But the fear in him didn’t matter, because he wasn’t the one sitting in the pilot’s seat, because the person who was was a water dancer. And never had Virgil trusted him more than here, surrounded by the currents and the stone.
Never more than now.
Gordon breathed.
And the world went dark.
The impact sent Virgil crashing into the side of the pilot’s chair, and there was a metallic thunk as Gordon’s head flung forward against the dash.
The screeching of the alarms bled together with the screams from the back compartment, melding together into blank, white noise in Virgil’s ears. A high pitched whine stretching out into infinity.
But infinity ended fairly quickly. And then that was it.
The red emergency lights blinked on again. Virgil’s shoulder smarted worse now but he was still in one piece.
Gordon sat up from the dash, looking a bit dazed but no worse for wear. “We okay? You okay?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“All good.” Gordon grinned and rapped a fist against his helmet. “Nice to have a copilot.”
Virgil cracked a smile at that one.
He peered out the windshields. Outside the glass was a more solid darkness than the hazy shadows of before. “Gords, are we… in a cave?”
“Cave is being kind of generous.” Gordon said, taking stock of Four’s controls. “But I thought this hollow could give us some cover.”
“Are we stuck?”
“Totally. But lucky for us I’ve got a secret weapon.” There was a grin that was decidedly more cheeky little brother than reassuring rescue operative. “Check the depth gauge, bro.”
Virgil looked over Gordon’s instruments and found a number he recognized. They were right on the edge of the threshold for Two’s rescue cable.
“I tried to get us a little closer to the surface.” Gordon said, watching his brother’s face. “But you could probably still fish us out.”
“I’m your plan B?” Virgil said, and the words were just a little incredulous. They were in an environment where Gordon was masterful, while Virgil was usually leagues away.
But Gordon just looked at him, aquanaut and submariner and water dancer, and his face said duh. “You’re always my plan B.”
Which shouldn’t have been surprising, but in this instance it was. Gordon dove miles deep into the ocean, and Virgil waited for him far above. And sure he thought of himself as a guardian for his little brother but he couldn’t really tear apart the ocean if he tried.
If he needed to.
Still. Virgil could understand it on some level. John’s voice in his ear could calm him like no other. And it was always easier to fly with Scott on his wing. Virgil had just never considered he could provide that kind assurance from so far away.
Though Gordon, apparently, felt differently.
Virgil called Two to rendez-vous directly above them, and lowered the rescue claw to it’s maximum length.
It was a bit of a stretch, and had him pulling Two closer to the ocean than he would’ve liked, but her cable reached them. A hand reaching down from far away.
Virgil dig them out as quickly as he was able without ringing down more of the mountain. Gordon ran through a quick systems check, gave another word of reassurance to their passengers, then began to take them up. No one wanted to stay in the area any longer than strictly necessary.
The cockpit grew steadily lighter as Four climbed for the surface, trading the silt for the sunlight. Gordon piloted with a careful frown, maneuvering his sub with practiced ease.
Carving through the blue as sure as ever.
Virgil felt a smile on his lips. “Nice job, Gords.”
Gordon looked up at him, crinkling eyes. “Nice job, yourself.”
@photowizard17 If you're from the US, you can watch MLB on Netflix! It should be in the children's section I believe. Otherwise you can check out @miraculousubs- they had a spreadsheet with links to streams of all the episodes in three different language options but I think that might be down atm. @miraculousenglish might be another good place to check out though!
As much as I laughed at the original, I really just don’t see Gordon flippin’ the bird to any of his brothers. (Especially Scott)
So yes, I changed it a bit. x’D
send me a made-up fic title and i’ll tell you what i would write to go with it
Kinda leaning towards something IDW-verse. Maybe something about Chromia hunting Liege Maximo? Her thoughts as she pursues him across the galaxy or her fight against him.
